Set aside these dates for the 2026 Health Libraries Conference
This is a joint effort between HLA & HLi, so it will be twice as good
Theme: The Fire Within : Passion and Purpose in Health Libraries
More details to follow …
Three good reasons to complete:
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:
➡️ HLA Survey 2026 ⬅️
Best Search Engines for Research Papers in 2026
What Happens When AI Can Use the Library
Yale Library is testing an AI-powered connection for deeper searching of library resources
Why Swedish Schools Are Bringing Back Books
How Australia Built a Standards-Based National Lending Network
What’s a library worth? Report puts dollar figure on ‘invaluable’ institutions
Automate your library’s e-resource access testing (compatible with EZProxy & OpenAthens)
Systematic reviews in minutes to hours
Libraries 2045: What Will the Next 20 Years of Libraries and AI Look Like?
Health Sciences Library Group 2026 Conference presentations
Horizon Europe decision: ‘benefits for decades’, say unis
Search String Theory – Applying pairwise combinatorics to PubMed searches
From hospital-by-default to neighbourhood-by-design
Goodbye 1800Medicare: it was brief, but nice knowing you
Healthdirect signals major shift: ‘front end has changed; the mission has not’
Genomics and Your Hospital : A toolkit to support hospitals implement high-quality genomic care
New AI agents and referral platforms might rewire Australian healthcare by stealth
An oldie but a goodie. Easy one for health librarians …
A boy is in a terrible car accident. His father is killed at the scene. The boy is rushed to hospital and taken to the operating theatre. The surgeon walks in, looks at him, and says: “I can’t operate on him — he’s my son”?
Academic medical librarians and video consultations: our new normal (2026)
Collaborative large language models (LLMs) are all you need for screening in systematic reviews (2026, preprint)
”collaborative approach utilizing the two best-performing models (GPT-4 and Claude-3S) achieved an average precision of 99.9% and a recall of 98.5%”
AI, Automation, and the Future of Library Science Degree Careers (2026)
Thousands of paywalled research papers could be freed with this simple fix (2026, JCU librarians)
Latest issue of JMLA
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
Canadian Health Library Value Planner (2026) – available at Health Libraries – How to Demonstrate Value
Google Scholar title OR search
allintitle:dog | cat | “insulin resistance”
OpenAi launches Prism for researchers
“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”
AI agents are hiring human ‘meatspace workers’ — including some scientists (2026)
” … 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”
Open-source AI tool beats giant LLMs in literature reviews — and gets citations right (2026)
Australia introduces open science policy to expand access and collaboration in health research (2026, old news but comes into effect Jan & Feb for MRFF & NHMRC respectively)
Are AI Tools Killing Review Articles? Two Failure Modes Suggest Otherwise (2026, Aaron Tay)
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)
New Aaron Tay posts:
The Blank Box Problem: Why It’s Harder Than Ever to Know What to Type Into an AI Search Bar
Deep Research, Shallow Agency: What Academic Deep Research Can and Can’t Do
Google Scholar Labs (ask it a natural language question and it provides a set of citations with each having a summary of the answer underneath it)
Google Scholar blog (highlights and comments now available in Scholar PDF Reader)
Interesting read – Technically Accurate, Medically Fatal : The AI Error We Caught in Real-Time
Very extensive wiki on AI compiled by a medical librarian (Dean Guistini). Scroll down to see the most visited topics, review on individual tools
Conducting Systematic Reviews in a Day: Enter Artificial Intelligence (one of the authors is from the Centre for Journalology so must be good)
“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
Queryome: Orchestrating Retrieval, Reasoning, and Synthesis across Biomedical Literature
“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”
Available as an app for Windows & MacOS
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”
Looking to level up your grey literature skills? This interactive event brings health librarians together to:
* Share practical strategies
* Explore real-world examples
* Discuss challenges in finding and using grey literature
You’ll gain actionable techniques to:
* Improve your searches
* Enhance your training sessions
* Deliver better results for your clients
Connect with peers, learn proven approaches, and walk away with tools you can implement immediately
Rachel Davis & Sonny Chandra – Canberra Health Services Library
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.
C2: Reference and Research Services
C6: Health Literacy and Teaching
C7: Health Research
View HLA Competencies
Wed 18 Feb 26
1:00-2:00 pm (Vic / NSW / Tas / ACT)
12:00-1:00 pm 👑 QLD / 12:30-1:30 pm 🍷 SA / 11:30-12:30 pm 🐊 NT / 10:00-11:00 am 🐟 WA / 3:00-4:00 pm 🥝 NZ
Online webinar Zoom – a link will be sent the day prior.
This event will be recorded and sent to attendees following the event.
ALIA Members – Free (👉 one of 14 benefits of HLA Membership)
Non-Members – $30
One CPD hour towards Health Professional Development Scheme
In this session, we’re shining a spotlight on the creative and impactful ways hospital libraries are reaching out to their communities. You’ll hear from passionate professionals who are doing fantastic work through pop-up libraries and outreach services in their health settings. Each speaker will share their unique approach—how they’ve brought library services beyond traditional walls, connected with staff in new ways, and made health information more accessible and engaging.
Whether you’re looking for inspiration, practical ideas, or just curious about what’s possible, we hope you come along and learn from others and share your own successes with us all.
Cherish a wearer of multiple hats, she can wax an eyebrow (was a beauty therapist in a past life) while doing a literature review (poorly, area of PD) and whip up a smart-looking CANVA graphic to market library services. Cherish is passionate about equity of access to health information and library services, a good espresso, the collection and maintenance of organisational history, and library marketing. She recently completed a Master of Library & Information Science at CSU, and is on the organising committee for the Hospital Librarians COP. Most importantly, she has an honorary PhD in snack collection for her two chaotic children and French bulldogs, in the words of Em Rusciano, a “maximalist power queen” and very tired.
Megan is a librarian with a special interest in hospital librarianship, committed to partnering with clinicians, students and partner organisations to enable improved health outcomes through evidence-based practice, research and collaboration. Coupled with extensive experience as a psychologist (organisational) and health professional, she is passionate about creating a welcoming learning environment, enabling access to contemporary evidence, and leveraging ‘teachable moments’ to build capacity and confidence amongst library clients.
Sue is a passionate health sciences librarian who uses her extensive background in education to foster self-efficacy and independent learning in library clientele. This is achieved through recognition that all learning environments must be non-threatening, relaxed, and based on hands-on activities if new skills and ideas are to be embedded. Sue particularly enjoys the intricacies of specialised librarianship and has worked in law, music, health and university libraries.
Michelle qualified as a late-in-life librarian from Curtin University in 2019 and has worked at the Horsham campus of Grampians Health since November that year. This role has her straddling the vicissitudes of being, simultaneously, a “solo” librarian, while also being part of the library team at the Ballarat campus. She’s however, very grateful for this support or it would get very challenging very quickly! Her professional interests are library marketing, health history and generative artificial intelligence in health and scholarly communications. Her personal interests are her cat ‘Lola’, sourdough bread making, reading Sci-Fi & epic fantasy novels and watching endless YouTube chateau renovation channels!
C2: Reference and Research Services
C6: Health Literacy and Teaching
Wednesday, 26 November 2025
1:00-2:00 pm (VIC / NSW / TAS / ACT)
12:00-1:00 pm (QLD)
12:30-1:30 pm (SA)
11:30-12:30 pm (NT)
11:00-12:00 (WA)
3:00-4:00 pm (NZ)
Online webinar Zoom – a link will be sent the day prior.
This event will be recorded and sent to attendees following the event.
ALIA Members – Free
Non-Members – $25