She has decided to hang up her (Dockers) boots and swap Libkey Nomad for Grey Nomad
(in the image, Cheryl is on the left with an unknown art gallery attendant on the right)
Her most ardent parting wish is that anyone who hasn’t yet completed the HLA 2026 Survey takes the time to do so
As many librarians are frustrated authors, perhaps the best send off is a Cheryl Poem (by a health librarian who obviously has too much time on his hands …)
An ode to Cheryl, on her retirement (HCL Anderson redux)
There once was a health librarian named Cheryl,
Whose name was not amenable to limerick writing,
Unless she had colleagues named Beryl, or Meryl,
And they co-authored papers, and were diligent in citing.
Still, even if the rhymes elude a limerick,
The HCL Anderson award is worthy of something poetic.
A sonnet in MeSH, perhaps, announced with a gong,
Or NLM classification reworked as the Dockers theme song.
I know. A Haiku!
It’s True, I do know haiku.
See, told you I do.
But back to Cheryl, and all that she does,
For WA, and HLA, and NLA, and ALIA;
For committees and sub-committees and all their paraphernalia;
And, well, frankly, for all of us.
(Sidenote – ALIA is not the Australian Liquor Industry Association…
although that would explain some MARC records I’ve seen – boom-tish!)
But back to Cheryl, and all that she does,
In collecting and parsing and sharing,
And building and joining and supporting,
And setting an example for all of us.
There cannot be a PubMed search string she has not run,
An interdisciplinary comment thread she has not begun,
A publisher price she has not negotiated down,
Or an uppity rep she has not run out of town.
So all hail Cheryl, a paragon of the profession,
Even if she would be appalled by this digression.
Fare thee well in your deserved retirement,
As you pen your memoirs on digital parchment.
No more battling the traffic on Canning Highway.
No more worrying if your job can be done by AI.
No more union claims frustrated at every turn.
No more desire to watch the (publishing) world burn.
No more finding all the full-text… except one!
No more search updates to be redone.
No more fighting mildew in the basement stacks.
No more downtime after more cyber attacks.
Just a new hip to go with the other one
And a new caravan to chase the sun.
Plenty of reading and a Europe trip or two,
A Dockers flag to pine for and some Weagles to boo.
The money is the same but the hours are better.
As one road ends another will lead wherever.
Dream a new dream and say goodbye to tension,
Set a new goal and say hello to your pension.
All hail Cheryl, a paragon of the profession,
The legacy she leaves is a lasting impression.
Health and libraries are richer for her contribution,
And all of us blessed by her friendship and dedication.
Only one of the questions is mandatory – basically you only need to respond where you have something to say …
It will be very helpful to the HLA Committee for shaping strategies, directions, events & more
You have no doubt returned to work bright-eyed & bushy tailed, and eager to advance health librarianship. So grab a cuppa 🍵 and let us know your thoughts:
Changing minds and methods: providing health sciences faculty with alternatives to systematic reviews assignments
Which Systematic Review Software Works Best? A Practical Comparison
good comparison table
bims: Biomed News (other listservs of possible interest to health librarians available on the Elist section of HLA)
how you can create your own alert if you are particularly interested in a topic, and then others can follow it etc
OpenEvidence
Google Vids – New (Sep 2025) / free (10 min length limit), cloud based, seems pretty easy to use / can provide text & a pretty good AI voice will provide the voiceovers / introductory video
“Prism (free) brings together drafting, editing, citation management, equations, and collaboration in a single, cloud-based environment. Built with native LaTeX support, the platform removes the need for complex local setups while enabling researchers to focus on their work rather than tooling”
” … just a few of the tasks assigned to people on RentAHuman.ai — a platform that allows people to advertise their time and talent to artificial-intelligence agents”
Keyboard shortcuts for Outlook (web version) – in case of use to anyone else who prefers the web version of Outlook (may work in the program also – not sure)
(note – this is with Gmail keyboard shortcuts activated via settings (cog icon top right) > General > Accessibility > Keyboard Shortcuts > select Gmail)
Close email – U (takes you back to list view)
Delete email – Shft 3 (ie #)
Expand (conversation) – ;
Folders (move focus to) – Ctrl Y
Forward email – F
Go to Drafts – G D
Go to Inbox – G I
Go to Sent – G T
Junk – Shft 1 (send message to junk)
Keyboard shortcuts – ?
Label – L
Left panel (hide) – Alt F1
Letter navigation – Alt > letter
Mark read – Shift I
Mark unread – Shift U
Move email to folder – V
New email – C
New Window – Shft Enter (new window. Win up arrow for full screen. Useful to see full chain)
Next email in list – J
Open first email – EnterPin – right click and select
Previous email in list – K
Reply – R
Reply all – A
Search – /
Select – X
Send – Ctrl Enter
Snooze – B (set it to reappear)
Search:
category: e.g. category:tickets (via Label as above)
subject: e.g. subject:iron
from: e.g from:juliet
Boolean: e.g. AND OR NOT (e.g. received:12/03/2024 AND subject:ticket)
attachments: e.g. hasattachment:yes attachments:*.docx
received: e.g. received:today “this week” “this month” “this year” 12/03/2024
to: e.g. to:juliet
Many of you may have heard that Cheryl Hamill is exiting stage left (today actually) after many years being a leading light in health librarianship.
Read the poem written for her – by a librarian with clearly too little work to do – and discover her most ardent parting wish …
“One in four animals on the planet earth is a beetle. Think of your three closest friends – if none of them are beetles, statistically speaking you are probably a beetle” 🪲
New issues of JEAHIL, JCHLA (reviews of Lens, DynaMed, OpenAlex etc)
“We recently introduced otto-SR (Otto Science Institute), a generative AI system for automated screening and data extraction that incorporates advanced prompting strategies and agentic LLM workflows. Data from currently unpublished studies involving benchmarking against dual human reviewers suggest that otto-SR achieved superior performance in both screening (otto-SR: 96.7% sensitivity, 97.9% specificity; human: 81.7% sensitivity, 98.1% specificity) and data extraction (otto-SR: 93.1% accuracy; human: 79.7% accuracy) tasks. Most notably, otto-SR reproduced and updated an entire issue of the Cochrane library (12 SRs) in under 2 days*, highlighting the potential for automation to accelerate evidence synthesis and to provide decisionmakers with timely information. Across these 12 SRs, otto-SR included nearly twice as many eligible studies as the original Cochrane authors (114 versus 64 studies)”
* “Using otto-SR, we reproduced and updated an entire issue of Cochrane reviews (n=12) in two days, representing approximately 12 work-years of traditional systematic review work“. From the preprint describing Otto
“More recently, the concept of agentic RAG has gained traction, promising more sophisticated “deep research” capabilities. Systems developed by industry leaders such as OpenAI [16], Perplexity AI [17], and Google [18] have demonstrated the ability to decompose complex questions, perform iterative searches, and synthesize more comprehensive reports. Yet, these general-purpose agentic systems are not specifically tailored for the biomedical domain … to bridge this gap, we introduce Queryome, a multi-agent deep research system designed specifically for end-to-end biomedical literature analysis. Queryome orchestrates a hierarchy of collaborating AI agents that perform iterative, multi-faceted searches against a curated, comprehensive search engine covering the entirety of PubMed [1]. Crucially, the system is engineered to reason over abstract text of every retrieved article, ensuring that its final synthesis is deeply grounded in the available evidence”
Instats videos – quite a few are free (using Filters (top right) > Sort by > Free. Many are quite technical but there are a number on research, using statistical tools (R, Python etc). An upcoming one is AI Tools for Research 2.0 (requires free registration, can be watched later)
Previously mentioned the many useful ebooks available via Open Educational Resources (OER) but difficulty in keeping track on new ebooks available. You can sign up to receive updates here
Spotted in the Fin Review re terrible corporate jargon – being “Promoted Outwards” is “not about job cuts but giving employees the opportunity to embrace new challenges outside the organisation”
Rachel is a Senior Client Services Librarian at Canberra Health Services Library. Having moved to health libraries after 15 years in public libraries, her passion is empowering people through critical literacies, quality information and lifelong learning. Rachel draws on her background in government and library services to navigate complex information landscapes, including grey literature.
Sonny brings over 26 years of experience in library services across Fiji and Australia, with a strong focus on academic and special libraries. His expertise includes library leadership and management, digital and information literacy, teaching, training, and research support. A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Sonny is passionate about enhancing learner engagement and interaction. He specializes in designing, delivering, and evaluating library training programs that empower learners and improve learning outcomes.
✅ ALIA HLA Competencies
C2: Reference and Research Services C6: Health Literacy and Teaching C7: Health Research
Jackie Edwards – Murrumbidgee Local Health District
Maddie Beer – Monash Health
Jana is the Manager, Library Services at The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane, Queensland. You’ll find her most days trawling medical databases for evidence to support patient care, organisational change, and research. With a background in magazine and technical publishing, she is a big fan of templates and making documents functional but pretty. She has a passion for evidence synthesis methods, working with research teams on reviews and raising awareness of best practice through education and training.
Susie trained as a teacher before completing her Masters in Information Science. She has worked in academic libraries and publishing, and joined Epworth in 2009 where her passion for autodidactism, discovery and access has enabled her to contribute across all domains. EKS is a fully accessible web-based knowledge service which is integrated with Epworth’s clinical, education, research and quality activities. Susie has positioned literature searching as EKS’s premier service for doctors and senior staff, leveraging our expertise in discovery, access and understanding of our requestors’ needs.
Jackie is Library Manager at Murrumbidgee Local Health District, located at Wagga Base Hospital. I support MLHD staff and affiliated students from UNSW Rural Medical School and CSU School of Rural Medicine. I have extensive experience in local government, health, and University libraries. My interests include user experience, digital resources, and research.
Madeleine is a Medical Librarian at Monash Health Library with extensive experience in advanced literature searching to support clinical care, research, and organizational decision-making. She also delivers training webinars to enhance literature searching skills among healthcare professionals.
