Speaker(s):
Ana Patricia Ayala, MIst, AHIP
Research Services Librarian
Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto

Patricia has co-lead the development of the Systematic and Scoping Review Service (SSRS) at Gerstein Science Information Centre, focused on collaborating with faculty and researchers engaged in systematic, scoping and other types of method-driven literature reviews. Patricia’s portfolio includes building and deepening relationships with faculty, staff, students and other researchers, on campus, within research institutes, teaching hospitals, hospital libraries, and national and international organizations. She established a liaison relationship between Gerstein and the EQUATOR Network with the purpose of developing a network for librarians across the globe, and organizing outreach opportunities advocating for the role of librarians in research, proper reporting, and research integrity. She’s currently co-leading research on the challenges and opportunities for early career researchers undertaking systematic reviews. As an ambassador for the Open Science Framework (OSF), a tool that facilitates integrity and transparency in the entire research cycle, Patricia conducts workshops and teaches how initiatives like this one can be used to align scientific approaches with scientific values. 

Patricia loves her job so much she dance-walks to work (true story), believes coffee is a food group, and is passionate about proper reporting, transparency and reproducibility in research. She actively empowers librarians, scientists, faculty, and students to practice and promote these principles. Prior to her role as research services librarian, she was the Liaison and Faculty engagement librarian for the faculty of Nursing at U of T.

Patricia graduated magna cum laude from the University of North Carolina with degrees in Biology and Fine Arts. She completed her Masters in Information and Library Studies at the University of Toronto in 2010. 

Melissa L. Rethlefsen, MSLS, AHIP
Associate Dean
George A. Smathers Libraries and Fackler Director of the Health Science Center Libraries
University of Florida in Gainesville

Until this month, Melissa was Interim Executive Director & Librarian at the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. She received her Master's Degree from the University of North Texas, and she graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor's Degree in English and History from the University of Minnesota. She previously worked at Mayo Clinic's Learning Resource Center, the Minnesota Department of Health RN Barr Library, and the University of Minnesota Bio-Medical Library. In her role as Interim Executive Director at the University of Utah, she was also the Director for the MidContinental Region & National Training Office, National Network of Libraries of Medicine. She also served as the Section Director for the Systematic Review Core, Population Health Research Foundation for Discovery within the Center for Clinical & Translational Science, for which she led a team of librarians in performing systematic reviews and conducting systematic review methodology research. She also led the creation of the first national conference on research reproducibility, Research Reproducibility 2016, #MakeResearchTrue; its successor, Research Reproducibility 2018: Building Research Integrity through Reproducibility; the Research Reproducibility Coalition at the University of Utah; and Utah’s Grand Rounds: Research Reproducibility, an interdisciplinary seminar series.

Melissa has received many awards for her work in medical librarianship, including being named as a Library Journal Mover & Shaker in 2009 and receiving the Estelle Brodman Award for Academic Medical Librarian of the Year in 2015. She served as a member of the Medical Library Association Board of Directors from 2015-2018, and is currently a member of the Medical Reference Services Quarterly Editorial Board. Her research currently focuses on systematic review methodology and reporting, particularly the librarian's role in improving quality and reproducibility. She is also known for her work in social media and public health bibliometrics. She has published a book, Internet Cool Tools for Physicians; over 20 peer reviewed research articles in journals including PLoS One, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, and Mayo Clinic Proceedings; and over 50 non-peer reviewed articles, including articles in JAMA and Minnesota Medicine.