The shifting evidence paradigm – from literature to data

Carol Lefebvre will address the shift in focus over the last 20 years away from purely ‘literature searching’, i.e. only searching databases such as MEDLINE/PubMed for published literature, such as journal articles and books for identifying studies for evidence synthesis. She will consider the ever-increasing role of unpublished data sources such as trials registers and regulatory agency sources.

Carol Lefebvre is an Independent Information Consultant and was previously the Senior Information Specialist at the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford from 1992 to 2012. She is a founder member of the Cochrane Collaboration. She is Co-Convenor of the Cochrane Information Retrieval Methods Group, serves on the Cochrane Methods Executive and is lead author on the searching chapter of The Cochrane Handbook. She also co-led the development of the Cochrane standards for searching (MECIR).
She was awarded an M.Sc. in Library and Information Science from the University of Loughborough (UK) in 1985 and an Honorary Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in 2007.
She now focusses on teaching and consultancy in information retrieval for evidence synthesis, such as systematic reviews, health technology assessment and guideline development.