As of September 30, 2022, the evidence review website that I have been updating since April 2020 will start to make its way to sunnier pastures. The close of over two years of almost daily updates on COVID-19 evidence reviews feels like closing a significant chapter on a big part of my professional life and has me feeling reflective.

I remember working with my team to pull this website together at the peak of the pandemic, and it was an absolute flurry of edits, tweaks, and overhauls that consumed countless hours of my working day. It was exhausting, but I did get to log quite a bit of overtime during a very uncertain economic time (😁). It also coincided with my personal journey into web development, so I was very excited to have the chance to work on an actual website at my day job.

Over the next two years, the website workflow would be adjusted to respond to changes in the pandemic and emerging research needs. My team and I settled into a routine to ensure the website was as current and comprehensive as possible. I always started my day by spending about an hour or so updating the website with the latest systematic and rapid reviews; it came to the point where if I was distracted or otherwise unable to work on the website first thing in the morning, my whole day felt off, somehow.

And now that part of my life is over. It feels strange, but also freeing. I find myself excited to think of all the ways I could potentially spend that first hour of the work day when I’m at my most productive. I’m currently torn between tackling a new research publication or taking an online course.

As an added bonus to this project, I was able to publish a paper on the website in the Journal of the Medical Library Association; check it out if you’re curious to learn more about how this website functioned and the impact it had on VA research.