Systematic Reviews—From 1753 to Today

This year is an eventful year in evidence synthesis. Besides marking the launch of the Northeastern University Library’s Evidence Synthesis Service, this year also marks the 270th anniversary of the publication of one of the earliest progenitors of the modern systematic review: James Lind’s A treatise of the scurvy (1753). 

James Lind was a Scottish naval surgeon who is frequently credited with conducting the first clinical trial in history,  a controlled experiment which evaluated the effectiveness of citrus fruits for preventing scurvy among British sailors. He published the results of this trial in 1753 in the aforementioned treatise.

The front page of Lind's "A Treatise of the Scurvy"
Photo courtesy of the James Lind Library.

As was common in 18th century literature, the full title of the publication was significantly more verbose: A treatise of the scurvy. In three parts. Containing an inquiry into the nature, causes and cure, of that disease. Together with a critical and chronological view of what has been published on the subject. 

Yes, that’s just the title.

And it’s the final bit of that title–“a critical and chronological view of what has been published on the subject”–which should pique our interest. In providing a comprehensive review and critical evaluation of the published literature on scurvy, Lind essentially conducted an early version of a systematic review. 

However, researchers from the 20th and 21st centuries have since pointed out that Lind’s ‘chronological view’ was not truly comprehensive. As Jeremy Hugh Baron of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai wrote in a 2009 paper:

“Lind failed to scrutinize Woodall’s 1617 publication The Surgions Mate with its clear recommendation of equipping ships to the East Indies with lemon juice to prevent scurvy. Nor did Lind cite books by other authors recommending citrus fruits such as Farfan, Hawkins, Clowes, Smith, Ferrari, Moyle, and Esteyneffer, presumably because they were not then in the library of the Edinburgh College.”

Lind missed relevant publications because he relied on only one source: the library at the Edinburgh College. If Lind had searched one of the libraries at the University of Oxford, in addition to Edinburgh College, perhaps he would have found those other relevant texts.

Nowadays we obviously aren’t searching physical libraries when we conduct a systematic review; rather, we’re searching online databases of research articles. And so, you can see a modern parallel in a common mistake made by some systematic review authors: searching only one database. If the authors were conducting a systematic review on a particular nursing-led educational intervention, and the authors only searched the database CINAHL, they may miss out on relevant studies which appear in PubMed, but are not included in CINAHL. 

It’s for this reason that those conducting systematic reviews and other forms of evidence synthesis are recommended to search multiple databases. We don’t want to end up like Lind, missing highly relevant material because we failed to search multiple sources.

Unfortunately Lind did not have access to Northeastern University Library’s Evidence Synthesis Service (ESS). But you do! If you are planning to conduct a systematic review or another form of evidence synthesis, we’re here to help. Learn more about the ESS and how we can support your evidence synthesis project here: https://subjectguides.lib.neu.edu/systematicreview 

You can read more about the history of systematic reviews here: https://ebm.bmj.com/content/23/4/121 

Happy searching!

Snell Library Renovation Continues; 4th Floor Closed

Work on the Snell Library renovation continued in earnest over the winter break. With construction moving to the 4th floor, furniture was removed from that area and reorganize on the 3rd floor. Temporary walls were also installed on the 3rd floor to cut down on construction noises throughout the building.

While work is being completed on the 4th floor, please note that that level will be closed for the spring 2023 semester. Library users should relocate to the first three floors of the library or visit the Northeastern University Spaces page to find other suitable areas on the Boston campus. The Curry Student Center, Marino Center, 300 Mass. Ave, and most academic buildings have open seating available for study purposes.

The basement level also remains closed for the semester.

The Snell Library renovation project is a top-to-bottom redesign that will provide:

Improved study space, including:

  • a major increase in seating to accommodate both quiet and group study
  • bookable group study rooms on several floors
  • single-person pods for phone and video calls
  • new study space on the lower level
  • a larger, enhanced graduate study room
  • improved acoustic dampening throughout the building

Creative and collaborative opportunities, such as:

  • an expanded creative and design production zone on the 2nd floor
  • a research-focused area that brings together advanced digital scholarship projects from across the university
  • a new café and large event space open to the public on the 1st floor

Improved access to our collections and services, including:

  • more space to highlight our unique archives and special collections
  • on-site access to high-use books
  • easier access to library and information technology services

Compelling views, inside and out:

  • welcoming, light-filled areas with panoramas of the campus
  • a glass-enclosed central staircase showcasing newly opened areas of the library
  • a wrap-around glass façade on the 1st floor with new, larger entrances

Please follow us on Instagram and Twitter or visit our website for up-to-date construction and renovation news.

Remembering Christine McVie: An Interview with Larry Katz

Christine McVie standing in front of a microphone holding three maracas. She has long blonde hair and is wearing black.
Christine McVie
(Photo by Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Christine McVie, long-time keyboardist for the band Fleetwood Mac, died at the age of 79 on November 30, 2022. 

Records of McVie’s life and legacy can be found in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections’ Larry Katz Tapes, a collection of audio recordings between Boston arts and music writer Larry Katz and numerous musicians from 1980 to 2005. 

This interview with McVie took place shortly after Fleetwood Mac’s fourteenth studio album Tango in the Night was released in 1987, which marked the band’s triumphant return after a five-year hiatus. This hiatus saw the band’s members pursuing solo careers in music, but they ultimately came back together to create more music for, as McVie calls it, “the entity called Fleetwood Mac.” 

Listeners of Katz’s interview can come to understand McVie’s view of the band as something larger than herself or the other members in it. “The end result to me is always magical,” McVie states when asked about the “magic” that Fleetwood Mac imbues on its listeners. Even though she admits that the process can be tedious at times, she also reflects on the “mystical” feeling of listening to a record she could spend an entire year working on. 

In this way, McVie describes the creation of an album “like a painting.” “[We] decide what colors we need, what depth we need, what kind of emotion we need… We sketch it in and fill in the colors as we go along.” 

When asked about her future, McVie states, “I don’t see any reason to stop…I don’t see any reason at all–it’s my life. I don’t know what else I’d do if I didn’t write songs or sing.” 

Source: “Interview with Christine McVie, English singer, songwriter, keyboardist and member of band Fleetwood Mac.” Larry Katz Tapes. University Libraries Archives and Special Collections Department.

Mellon Foundation Awards $505,000 Grant to Extend Funding for the Boston Research Center

Boston Research Center logo

The Northeastern University Library has received a $505,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the final developmental phase of the Boston Research Center. This grant builds upon two previous grants from the Mellon Foundation — which helped Northeastern launch the BRC with a $200,000 planning grant in 2017, and a $650,000 implementation grant in 2019.

“We deeply appreciate the Mellon Foundation’s ongoing support of the Boston Research Center and our library’s efforts to work with the communities that surround Northeastern’s campuses,” said Dan Cohen, Dean of the Northeastern University Library. “Along with our partners in the Boston area, we have learned a great deal about how to express our neighbors’ stories, culture, and history.”

The BRC is dedicated to bringing Boston’s neighborhood and community histories to light through the creation and use of new technologies, allowing Boston residents to share underrepresented stories from city’s past. In its most recent phase, the BRC has focused on specific community projects to help share the stories of these neighborhoods and organizations. The Mellon Foundation’s grant will help develop tools and workflows to curate and disseminate these collections, making them accessible to the community and easy to build upon in future work.

By gathering documents, images, and personal narratives, and creating metadata for community resources, the BRC ensures that everything from public art and oral histories to important neighborhood sights are recorded to help disseminate area history and culture. Recent projects include:

  • The Harriet Tubman Memory House Project, which contains photographs, oral histories, flyers, architectural plans, and other digitized materials that tell the interwoven stories of Boston’s South End neighborhood, the United South End Settlements and Harriet Tubman House, gentrification, community action, and resilience.
  • The East Boston Memoir Project, which contains photographs, oral histories, newspapers, and other digitized materials that make available the history of East Boston.
  • The Neighborhood Public Art Project, which contains an interactive map documenting Boston’s rich and diverse history of public art.
  • The Chinatown Collections Project, which contains historical records documenting the people, organizations, and historical collections of Boston’s Chinatown in a bilingual database.

Located in Northeastern University Library, the BRC is managed by the Archives and Special Collections and the Digital Scholarship Group. It works in collaboration with the Boston Public Library along with many community organizations and individuals.

Reading Recommendations for Native American Heritage Month

American Indian activists began working to establish a national “American Indian Day” in the early 20th century. Native advocates like Arthur C. Parker, Sherman Coolidge, and Red Fox James believed that a national day of observation would commemorate the Indigenous community’s history and culture. Various individual states established “American Indian Days” between 1915 and 1920; more recently, some states—including Massachusetts—have changed the second Monday of October, formerly “Columbus Day,” to “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” to focus on the stories of the Native peoples who existed in these lands before European contact, rather than on the oppressors, and to acknowledge the United States’ complicated legacy of colonialism and white violence. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush declared November National Native American Heritage Month (also known as “American Indian Heritage Month”).

Throughout November, visit the Hub on the first floor of Snell Library to explore our print collections featuring Native and Indigenous authors. If you’re not in Boston (and even if you are), make sure to check out the e-books and audiobooks on our virtual bookshelf! Here are some recommended reads from our collection:

Cover of The Only Good Indians


The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones (2020): If Halloween didn’t fulfill your cravings for creepy, check out the book Entertainment Weekly called “one of 2020’s buzziest horror novels.” The dark past of four American Indian families leave them terrorized by a vindictive entity determined to make them pay for their sins.



Cover of Split Tooth


Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq (2018): This award-winning novel by Inuk throat singer and artist Tanya Tagaq traces a girlhood in 1970s Nunavut, blending myth and memoir. The audiobook is read by Tagaq herself.




Cover of Poet Warrior


Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo (2021): Three-time United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo writes about her ancestry and the tribal stories and traditions that shaped her. She meditates on grief, loss, ritual, memory, music, joy and everything in between.




Cover of This Land is Their Land


This Land is Their Land: The Wompanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving by David J. Silverman (2019): Historian David J. Silverman unmasks the truth behind the simple, cheerful Thanksgiving story still taught in kindergartens around the country, and places the Wampanoag tribe at the center of the narrative.