by Rob Penfold | Jan 5, 2026 | Events
📗 Event Description
Join us for a practical session on literature searches, focusing on how to present results effectively to clients.
Learn strategies to make your search outputs clear, actionable, and tailored to client needs.
🗣️ Presenters
Jana Waldmann – The King Prince Charles Hospital – Metro North Health
Susie Moreton – Epworth Healthcare (Epworth Knowledge Services)
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.
✅ ALIA HLA Competencies
C3: Resources
C5: Digital, ehealth & technology
View HLA Competencies
🕐 When
Thursday, 5 March 2026
1-2 pm (Vic/NSW/TAS/ACT) | 12-1 pm (QLD) | 12:30-1:30pm (SA) | 11:30am-12:30pm (NT) | 10-11 am (WA) | 3-4 pm (NZ)
🗺️ Where
Online webinar Zoom – a link will be sent the day prior.
This event will be recorded and sent to attendees following the event.
💰 Cost
ALIA Members – Free (One of 14 reasons to consider HLA Membership)
Non-Members – $30
📝 Register
Register / Additional Information
🧗♀️ Professional Development
One CPD hour towards Health Professional Development Scheme
by Rob Penfold | Oct 3, 2025 | Events
👉 If you register then you will be sent a link to the recorded video to watch later at a more suitable times
👉 These are not run by ALIA or HLA
1️⃣ Open Science & Evidence Synthesis Thursday, October 23, 2025 @ 15:00 UTC/11 am EDT Register here
In this webinar, attendees will learn about the importance of Open Science principles in evidence synthesis and how adopting Open and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) workflows are vital for maintaining rigour in evidence synthesis. The session will cover both theory and practical advice, indicating the tradeoffs and cost implications of each component of Open Synthesis. We will discuss examples of good and bad practice, as well as becoming aware of tools to support open practices.
2️⃣ Framing the Research Question & Managing Search Volumes Monday, November 24, 2025 @ 16:00 UTC/11 am EST Register here
We’ll cover the importance of question framing in evidence synthesis as the foundational step in any review project. Attendees will learn about what types of questions can be answered with evidence synthesis and see examples of diverse types of questions. We will cover the theory of question formulation and practical examples of questions formulated for real-world review projects. We’ll discuss the practicalities of the implications of question framing – namely, the volume of evidence we then have to screen for relevance. The session will discuss how to manage this tradeoff of sensitivity (getting everything) versus specificity (staying manageable), and show examples of the time needed for different breadths and types of question.
3️⃣ Adaptive Approaches to Reviewing Evidence & Diverse Workflows Thursday, December 11, 2025 @ 16:00 UTC/11 am EST Register here
What happens if your review isn’t quite standard practice? How can you ensure you finish your review if time runs out? This webinar will focus on real-world application of evidence synthesis methodology best practice and give practical suggestions of ways to ensure you finish your review if resources, time or staff are limited. We will cover the nooks and crannies that lie between standard review types, not the traditional systematic review and meta-analysis but the more unconventional types of review – part-map, part framework. These often more exploratory methods are vital for maintaining rigour and allowing for ongoing work whilst still producing a high-quality, publishable output. We will cover what to do and what to call them. We will also cover practical ways in which you can plan for limitations in your workflows, ensuring you still have a rigorous product even if you run out of time.
About the Speaker
Neal Haddaway is an independent interdisciplinary researcher working in the field of environmental and social policy, but with a particular interest in agri-food supply chains. He has been working as an evidence synthesis methodologist since 2012 and has authored almost 200 publications, including methodology articles, systematic reviews, systematic maps and other forms of syntheses. He has contributed to best practice guidance for systematic reviews and maps. He has worked with the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence as Centre Director and Trustee, the Campbell Collaboration as Co-lead of the Climate Solutions Coordinating Group, and within the Cochrane Climate-Health Working Group. He established the Evidence Synthesis Hackathon and Evidence Synthesis and Meta-Analysis in R Conference, and has personally produced a suite of free online tools, including PRISMA2020 flowcharts and citationchaser. He has been teaching evidence synthesis methodology for 13 years and provides methods courses and training workshops across the world.
by Rob Penfold | Jul 9, 2025 | Events
📰 Description
Catchii is a web-based software for systematic review screening, developed here in Australia. It supports all stages of the screening process, from duplicate removal to data extraction, and includes features such as multi-user collaboration, advanced keyword highlighting and AI-assisted screening. Most importantly, Catchii is completely free to use, offering a viable alternative to paid tools while remaining comparable in functionality. This session will present Catchii’s features and demonstrate its use in systematic reviews. For more information: https://catchii.org
🗓️ When
Wednesday 23/7/25
1:00pm – 2:00pm AEST
🌍 Where
Online webinar Zoom – a link will be sent the day prior.
This event will be recorded and sent to attendees following the event.
💲 Cost
ALIA Members – Free. Another reason to consider HLA Membership
Non-Members – $22
📝 Register
Register | Additional Information
by Rob Penfold | May 30, 2025 | Events
We are pleased to let you know that registrations are now open for Research Support Community Day 2025, with the event program available to view here.
Research Support Community Day continues to remain a free, annual event that offers professional development and training for anyone involved in providing research support and related services. It is an opportunity to connect with colleagues, share ideas, and build your professional network. Holding the event online across 3 days ensures we can welcome participants and presenters from a range of Australasian and New Zealand time zones.
Find out more about our previous events and speakers from the Research Community Day YouTube channel.
Once again, we are grateful to Sage Publishing Asia-Pacific & Central Asia for their continued sponsorship of the event.
With the registration, there is an option to not attend but receive access to the recordings
👉 Note – this is not an HLA event
✅ A few presentations of possible interest:
- Systematic review Fun-damentals
- Full Text Seeker: A tool to assist with systematic reviews
- Safeguarding scholarly integrity: A novel approach to detecting predatory journals
- Generative AI training: Opt in or opt out?
by Rob Penfold | Apr 1, 2025 | Events
Event Description
In response to student and staff needs, librarians at Federation University created an Open Education Resource to introduce a complex topic in an easy to understand, step by step way. This lunchtime session will describe the process of creating the resource from inception to publication, and demonstrate the content, features and interactive elements of the resource.
Presenters
Erin Roga has a Masters of Information Management from the University of South Australia. Her minor thesis explored the impact of digital skills classes for first year nursing students. In 2022, she attended the Australian Evidence Based Practice Librarians’ Institute. Erin is a liaison librarian for the Institute of Health and Wellbeing at Federation University Australia, and supports students and academics in their teaching, learning and research, with a focus on training for conducting systematic and scoping reviews. She is interested in promoting the need for rigourous methodology and reporting of reviews. In her spare time, she loves to potter in her vegetable patch and hang out with her chicken friends, and is now learning to keep bees and cultivate mushrooms.
Dr. Karen Pruis obtained her PhD from Federation University Australia, and her qualitative thesis explored the lived experience of Chinese international students communicating in English while studying abroad. In 2023, she attended the Australian Evidence Based Practice Librarians’ Institute. Karen is a liaison librarian with the Institute of Health and Wellbeing at Federation University Australia with extensive experience in supporting students and researchers with evidenced-based literature searching. She loves to teach them how to construct a replicable search strategy for scoping and systematic reviews. Finally, Karen has two poodles named CoCo and Margaux who are her best friends and give her a lot of joy.
🕚 When
Tuesday, 27 May 2025
1.00pm – 2.00pm (Vic, NSW, Tas, ACT, QLD),
12:30pm – 1:30pm (SA, NT),
11am – 12:00pm (WA),
3pm – 4pm (NZ)
🌏 Where
Online webinar Zoom – a link will be sent the day prior.
💰 Cost
ALIA Members – FREE (One of 14 benefits of HLA ALIA membership)
Non-Members – $22
📝 Register
Register
