We Can't Keep Doing All the Things: Imagining and Implementing Sustainable Evidence Synthesis Support

Background: Faculty librarians at Mulford Health Science Library were eager to support the systematic review and other evidence synthesis projects of our faculty and students: developing search strategies, conducting searches, and writing methods sections. Eventually, the demand for these services outgrew our capacity, particularly driven by medical students’ demand for research opportunities. Objective: Our objective was to develop a new service structure to support evidence synthesis projects that reduced the investment of librarian time. Methods: In spring of 2025, our faculty librarians began to discuss refinements to the support we provided. We reviewed strategies of other libraries that had recently restructured their support to identify components to adopt. Results: The final structure of our process includes (1) educating researchers about the different types of evidence synthesis projects based on available time, personnel, and plans; (2) adapting a decision tree to direct researchers to the appropriate synthesis type; (3) developing a form based on PROSPERO for research teams to describe their preliminary work for a systematic review before a librarian will contact them to schedule a consult; and (4) clearly outlining the services that librarians are able to provide for a given review type. Conclusions: The new model was introduced in the summer of 2025. It is expected that these changes will ultimately free librarians’ time so that other areas of their workload are not shortchanged, though there will likely be an initial increase in time spent educating students and researchers about the changes.