Phase 2 of my library’s renovation begins next March. The 9-story tower will reopen as a transformed and jazzy space, and the older half of the library will shut down for its own 18-month renovation. My office is in the older half and will get destroyed. (My department will have a new office suite in the old building when it reopens.)

So I’m slowly cleaning out my office. I never kept much paper but did store some things I was emotionally attached to or didn’t have an e-copy of. I worked on this cleaning project a bit last month during a PolicyMap webinar.

One paper looked like this:

These are my notes from the 1995 book “101 stupid things trainers do to sabotage success” by Nancy Stern and Maggi Payment. I read this book in 1996 during my first job out of library school, at Davenport College (now University) in Holland, Michigan. The goal was developing instruction skills. I’ve done plenty of teaching since 1996, including teaching and co-teaching credit classes.

I noted 21 best practices listed in the book. Are they still relevant in 2026?

Here is the list, expanded slightly for clarity, with some comments freshly added.

The List

1. Keep the master keys in your pocket.
2. Turn on as much light as possible.

These first two concern physical aspects of the event. Did you scout out the room ahead of time? Will it be unlocked when you arrive early to get set up? Can you access the tech or connect your laptop to the big screen or projector? Where are the light controls and how do you adjust them? 

3. Match the audience’s fashion.

This book was written for corporate trainers, not academics. Whether academic librarians should do this is an interesting question. A trainer doesn’t always know what the audience’s fashion will be, anyway. Therefore dress in layers you can peel off? Hmm.

4. Be here now!

Focus. Don’t lose your concentration. I can’t believe what the audience is wearing, what were they thinking. Oh, look at that funny squirrel out the window! 

5. Learn names, use name tags, greet people before the training begins.

Still essential advice. Personalize the experience. Humanize yourself and let the students have the same opportunity. How you spend the five minutes or so before your instruction begins is very important and can set the tone for the whole event. Be intentional about those five minutes. (But for classes, don’t worry about name tags, unless you know the students have tabletop name signs, as business students often do.) 

6. Make eye contact with everyone.
7. Don’t get too close to people.

Although in some cultures, direct eye contact is threatening. Might want to be careful about that in a diverse classroom. 

8. Prepare an engaging introduction and involve your audience.

Connect your instruction to a need or problem or challenging assignment the students are facing, if possible. You can ask the students to describe their project or research needs. Then tell the students your workshop will save them time, reduce stress, and get the data or analysis they need. Maybe help prepare them for research and critical thinking they will need to do in their careers, too. 

9. Walk around the room, and offer short breaks to the audience [yes, that sounds like two best practices].

Students learn and retain the most at the beginning and at the end of a class session. But adding breaks in the middle – basically, stopping and restarting the class – helps with learning. 

10. Limit use of abbreviations and jargon.
11. Vary your speaking tone and dynamics. Slow down.

Slowing down is much easier said than done in my case, as my friends and colleagues well know. 

12. Establish your credibility.

Connected to #8.

13. Review the main points.
14. Customize the content to your audience.

Leverage the knowledge and experiences of your audience. 

15. Transition between topics.

But don’t try to cover too many topics. Less is often better. That was a hard lesson for many of us to learn.

16. Ask open-ended questions.
17. Include gentle imperatives like “Remember to…” and “Let’s do…”

Also: “You might want to write this down.” Or ask, “Can you figure out why this is useful/important?”

18. Collect humor and use it.

Oh, that can be hard for some of us except for getting a laugh at one’s own expense, maybe. How teachers can learn from improv comedians is a popular conference talk, but the main learning outcome is really about reading the room, I think, not being funny.

19. Simplify your content and outline.
20. Set performance objectives. Review them a week later.

We would call this assessment now? And there is value in assessing one-shot instruction, but learning how the students applied their research skills at the end of the semester is the real assessment of learning.

21. Begin on time.

Why is this last? Oh well. Yes, do this.

Elizabeth Gadd

What does it take to recognize that a widely accepted practice is no longer defensible? In this thoughtful reflection, Elizabeth Gadd draws on Rutger Bregman’s Moral Ambition to examine global university rankings through the lens of meaningful social change. Using Bregman’s six warning signs that a common practice may be wrong, she makes a compelling case that the shortcomings of university rankings are no longer simply methodological—they are ethical, structural, and increasingly difficult to ignore.

My holiday read this year was Historian Rutger Bregman’s Moral Ambition. He seeks to persuade us to pour our energies into activities that our descendants will be grateful for, rather than those that generate more heat than light.

He wants us to end up on the right side of history.

And when he gets us to the point of begging the question as to how we might identify such activities, he gives us six signs that a currently common practice might be wrong, to kickstart us into taking action. And this is what brought me up smart because they all apply to the practice of ranking universities.

1. We’ve long heard what’s wrong with it.

Everyone sighs a little bit when the topic of university rankings is raised. It’s not new, and it’s not rocket science.

A Google Ngram of the term university rankings shows massive growth in books relating to rankings since the early 2000s, so there is certainly no shortage of awareness.

And those books are catalogues of the rankings’ failings. We know the indicators are poor proxies for the things they seek to indicate (Nobel Prize-winning alumni as an indication of teaching quality, anyone?). We know they weight these indicators in unjustified ways (why does industry income count for 2.5%?). We know they make a zero-sum game out of something that isn’t a zero-sum game (why can’t all HEIs be top at what they set out to do?). And we know they exacerbate very unhelpful practices (citation cartels, buying authorship, and submitting false data).

You don’t need to be a genius to identify what’s wrong with the rankings (even though many in the sector they rank are in fact geniuses and still turn a blind eye). We know the issues. It’s just that nothing’s changed. Yet.

2. That’s just the way it is.

If I had the proverbial pound for every time I heard the expression, ‘the rankings are here to stay,’ I’d have a lot of proverbial pounds. This shoulder-shrugging inertia is the number one enemy of change advocates like me. It legitimises inaction and fence-sitting. And as I always say to my kids – we might not all be in a position to make the most significant change, but there is never nothing we can do.

We might not all be in a position to make the most significant change, but there is never nothing we can do.

Over the past three years, a proliferation of white papers criticising the rankings have generated a range of actions universities can take to signal their disquiet.  All of them recommended that universities sign up to the More Than Our Rank initiative as a risk-free way of signalling the limitations of global rankings without needing to boycott them or critique them in any way. And yet, sign-ups are slow, and action is severely lacking.

3. We avoid uncomfortable facts about the practice.

The rankings white paper I like the best is the United Nations University report from the International Institute for Global Public Health. That’s because they get right to the heart of the problem, namely, the inequities perpetuated by global university rankings. It describes how rankings set up white, English-speaking, research-intensive institutions in the Global North as the benchmark, indirectly discriminating against every other form of Higher Education Institution, which then become (literally) sub-standard. And by downgrading those institutions, they downgrade everyone ever associated with them. Not cool.

And by downgrading those institutions, they downgrade everyone ever associated with them.

Yet even some rankings critics avoid this uncomfortable truth in their critiques. They might hold their methods up to the cold, harsh light of scientific analysis, concluding the rankings aren’t true. Or highlight the gaming behaviours they incentivise, concluding the rankings lead to poor practices. They might even highlight the effect of rankings on university finances, concluding that they are overstepping their brief. But the fact that rankings are deeply and systematically racist is something that many are not prepared to say out loud. But it’s true.

4. We ridicule its opponents.

This week an overseas colleague sent me a photograph of a slide from a closed meeting they were attending which was headed “Elizabeth Gadd, the Anti-Rankings Critic”. The presenter then apparently proceeded to lambast all my rankings initiatives one-by-one (giving me no right of reply, of course).

Like many working on various forms of social change, those of us working in responsible research assessment are no strangers to ridicule. The CoARA Steering Board has been subject to a number of attacks, sometimes personal. In the days of Twitter I was attacked from both sides – by critics who thought my ideas were nonsense, and by ‘allies’ who thought they didn’t go far enough. I could go on. But I won’t. Because at the end of the day, we’re all human, and this stuff hurts actually.

5. We find it hard to justify it to our children.

You can picture the scene. A parent is looking at a university league table at the kitchen table.

Their child asks, “Which is the best university?”

The parent points to the one at the top.

“Why is it the best?”

The parent starts confidently, “Because it’s at the top of the league table.”

“So does that mean the students learn more?”

“Not necessarily.” 

“Does it mean the teaching is better?”

 “Not always.”

 “Does it mean it helps more people become nurses, teachers, engineers or social workers?”

 “No, that might not count for very much in this table.”

 “Does it mean it takes people who have had fewer chances and helps them do well?”

 “Again, not necessarily.”

 “Does it mean the research changed people’s lives?”

 “Sometimes. But sometimes it means the research was published in the right places, cited by the right people, and attached to a university that already had money, status and reputation.”

The child looks back at the table.

“It doesn’t sound like the ‘best university’ to me.”

There is a reason why the one calling out the Emperor’s (lack of) new clothes was a child.

6. We suspect future generations will see it as barbaric.

While ‘barbaric’ might feel like a strong word to describe university rankings in its commonly used interpretation of extreme cruelty and violence, it does hold in its original sense that they are crude and lack refinement. We can definitely do better. And it feels very likely that future generations are going to be puzzled as to how much power we have granted these unverified and unscientific, unjustifiably compiled rankings (not to mention the unappointed, unaccountable, commercial agencies that run them) to decide the future prosperity of our global universities and everyone who works in them.

Conclusion

I will continue to seek out practical, low barrier-to-entry ways in which people can join the change lobby.

So I will continue to call out the rankings despite the repetition, the deaf ears, and the mockery. Because the practice is unfair, unhelpful, and scientifically illiterate, and it shouldn’t have the influence it does. But more than that, I will continue to seek out practical, low barrier-to-entry ways in which people can join the change lobby. Because, as Bregman (2025) points out, often the only uniting characteristic of the many and varied people who take social action is that they were asked.

About the Author

Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd is Head of Research Culture & Assessment at Loughborough University. She chairs the International Network Of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group and is immediate past Vice Chair of the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). She co-authored the UKRI-commissioned report, ‘Harnessing the Metric Tide: Indicators, Infrastructures & Priorities for UK Research Assessment’ and was the recipient of the 2020 INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management and Leadership & the 2025 ARMA Award for Advocacy in Research Management.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4509-7785

Unless it states otherwise, the content of the Bibliomagician is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

DOI:

Last month right after PhD student orientation, I drove over to Durham, N.C. for the first ever NC LEAF All-Fellows Gathering. A project of the NC IDEA foundation, LEAF stands for Libraries for Entrepreneurial Advancement Fellowship, a program that “values library staff and empowers them to support the entrepreneurs and small business owners in their communities” according to the press release from last year. Carlo Diy of NC IDEA is the program manager, and the libraries in North Carolina are lucky to have him and NC IDEA working with us.

This post is not going to provide a full introduction to NC LEAF and how BLINC (Business Librarianship in North Carolina) has been involved. However, one of the editors of Ticker just asked for an essay on what BLINC has been up to since the pandemic. Nancy Lovas (UNC Chapel Hill (and BizLibratory)) is taking the lead on that writing project and will have it focus on LEAF. She has recruited BLINC chair Ciera Williams (Durham Public Library) as a co-author and is working on recruiting Carlo and a LEAF fellow. The essay should come out with the winter issue.

Carlo, Ciera, Ulayah Ivey (Union County Library), Devon Waugh (NC LIVE), and Megan Janicki (ALA/Libraries Build Business) spoke at ALA 2026 in Chicago two weeks ago about LEAF. Looks like they had good attendance. I’ve asked Carlo if the panelists would be interested in repeating their talk for Entrelib, in part so that it gets recorded and posted to YouTube. 

Most but not all of the LEAF fellows are public librarians, such as Kelsey Moore (High Point Public) who recently blogged about coordinating a training session for the local chamber. The LEAF “key partners” include three organizations: NC LIVE (provider of business databases state-wide for its goal of supporting economic development), ALA Libraries Build Business (LEAF uses the free LBB playbook), and BLINC. BLINC has provided mentors and trainers, chiefly Nancy, Ciera, and Morgan Ritchie-Baum (Wake Forest University). 

LEAF has an interesting origin story we’ll leave for the Ticker article to cover, but I want to note one core aspect. Before NC IDEA launched LEAF, Carlo spent much time interviewing librarians about what kind of engagement, programming, and hospitality would work for them. Open-minded market research, in other words. Around 50 librarians have signed up so far.

This first-ever, all-fellows summit in Durham was certainly a librarian-centered event. The LinkedIn summary provides some evidence. Fellows from the western, central, and eastern cohorts attended. Megan flew down from D.C.

Thom Ruhe, NC IDEA president and CEO, welcomed the librarians at the beginning of our day. I noted three things he said:

• “Librarians are superstars and (like schoolteachers) are under-appreciated.”
• “NC LEAF has become a model for other states to follow.”
• “NC IDEA has increased the budget for NC LEAF.” 

Carlo reminded us why NC IDEA is investing in libraries – libraries are known, embedded, and trusted in their communities and therefore make for excellent ecosystem partners.

He shared the goals for the day. The #1 goal was community. #2 was content and learning. [These have also long been the top two goals of BLINC, in that order!] He invited fellows to name five other fellows and partners in the room. Fellows who did so got prizes. 

After sharing news and successes (failures were also recognized as an expected outcome for any entrepreneurial venture), we played a game of Snake Oil in small groups. This game was new to me. It was fun! Also good practice for creativity, and pitching a (silly and semi-random) product to a specific consumer segment. Carlo concluded this activity by leading a short discussion of how playing that game helps us as entrepreneurship librarians.

We discussed obstacles we might be facing. Bureaucracies in library systems and local governments came up. As did gatekeepers who block community engagement opportunities. That was sad to hear about. Carlo also led discussions of future LEAF grants for fellows, and of a possible mentoring program. 

After lunch, we formed teams of three to use DataAxle (via NC LIVE) in a competitive exercise. Each team needed to identify competitors (or partners?) for a new Durham distillery. I liked this – it was as much about creative thinking and business strategy as “how to use DataAxle”.

Next was a discussion of language – how to effectively communicate what libraries have to offer to entrepreneurs and other stakeholders. Carlo put it as “practice matching what we are saying to who is listening and what the target audience understands.”

[I have probably complained before in this blog of hearing librarians at a conference exclaim loudly “Marketing? Eww gross, we don’t do marketing, that’s what businesses do.” But a central aspect of consumer marketing is understanding what the consumer needs and wants. Replace “consumer” with “patron.” If you don’t know what your patrons need and want, and don’t know how to communicate with your patrons, well, your library or your liaison service may not be very effective.]

We talked about how not to force library language on non-librarians but instead speak to their needs and experiences. Instead of “databases” (Microsoft Access?), talk about research tools or business intelligence. “Librarians” can be business information consultants as well as the good people who check out books behind their desk. 

Or promote your services and databases (sic) by asking vital questions to entrepreneurs and small business owners. Who are your competitors? Where are your customers? How much are your local competitors making each year? We can help you find out.

Ciera told a funny story. The Small Business Center at Durham Public was originally called the Incubator. Some patrons assumed the library was growing baby chickens. Their patron base was not VC-oriented but rather main street entrepreneurs and small business owners. So the library changed the name.

Next an advisor from the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina shared insights with the Fellows.

I had to leave around this point to attend a meeting back home. But the event continued with the fellows joining the full NC IDEA Partners Meeting for roundtable discussions – the fellows had a seat at the table with these ecosystem leaders. The day concluded with a happy hour for everyone plus additional founders and funders. 

I’ll post a link to the Ticker essay about NC LEAF when it is published.

The KB is working together with TNO, SURF and the NFI to create an ethical Dutch language model: GPT-NL.

Since last year, the KB also includes political party websites in its Web Collection. You can now find a description of this collection on the website (in Dutch).

The KB had a good digital year in 2025, according to the annual report. However, action is necessary to ensure the preservation of our digital heritage.

Four major Dutch heritage organisations, including the KB, signed the Open Heritage Statement.

Last May, the book Het vervlechten van hoop (Interweaving Hope) was published. In it, Indigenous Surinamese talk about their culture and history. The KB initiated this book and is including it in its collection

In June, the KB is organising various activities celebrating the theme of nature. 

The KB will be a partner in the Expertise Centre for Digital Literacy on behalf of the library sector.

On 11 May, the second edition of the National Action Days for Resilient Heritage kicked off at the KB (National Library of the Netherlands).

Blog Posts:

• The Golden Boy’s Guide to Bipolar by Sonora Reyes: A Review
• Something Close to Magic by Emma Mills: A Review
• Kamila Knows Best by Farah Heron: A Review
• Beth is Dead by Katie Bernet: A Review
• Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood: A Review
• All the Way Around the Sun by XiXi Tian: A Review
• The Leaving Room by Amber McBride: A Review
• Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook, Ryan Estrada, illustrated Ko Hyung-Ju: A Graphic Novel Review
• Travelers Along the Way by Aminah Mae Safi: A Review

Read:

1. All the Way Around the Sun by Xixi Tian* (audio)
2. Finding Her Edge by Jennifer Iacopelli
3. One Last Word by Suzanne Park* (owned)
4. The Café of Infinite Doors by Zara Marielle
5. Lunar New Year Love Story Gene by Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham* (owned)
6. Fall In Love, You False Angels, Vol. 1 by Coco Uzuki*
7. A Kingdom of Quartz 1 by Bomhat*
8. Awkward by Svetlana Chmakova
9. Taylor Swift by the Book: The Literature Behind the Lyrics, from Fairy Tales to Tortured Poets by Rachel Feder, Tiffany Tatreau (owned)
10. Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (owned)
11. Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 45 Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 45by Mizuho Kusanagi*

Project Zero TBR:

TBR at the start of the month: 147
TBR at the end of the month: 144

Owned books at the start of the month: 407
Owned books at the end of month: 409

TBR at the start of 2026: 147
Owned books at the start of 2026: 406
(Find more details on @princesschapters‘ Instagram.)
I’ll be marking owned books above to keep myself honest although I won’t be tracking books I give away. I’ll also be posting a monthly to read stack over on Instagram.

Diverse Baseline Challenge:

Total read: 7
Read at least 3 books by BIPOC authors read in the month (indicated by * above)
Adapted from a challenge (including more specific monthly prompts) on Instagram thanks to @bookish.millennial and @themargherita.s.

How My Month Went:

It has been a rough start to 2026 over here. The news is already quite terrible but also personally everything has been very hard. First there were the two snowstorms (one bringing 10″ and one bringing 20″) within a month of each other. We’ve had ongoing issues with heat in the apartment. Bella hurt her leg which is slowly healing but is so stressful and sad to watch. Our oven broke and needed a new igniter which wasn’t a thing I knew existed until this month. My mom wanted to make some home improvements so I’ve been working myself ragged building new furniture and moving things around which is finally done.

Then we had a scary moment the day the oven was repaired when someone (we think a thief) lowered the fire escape outside the back door as a point of egress. We’re all fine but it was scary seeing a strange man appear out of nowhere and I had to call the police.

All in all, I would call most of February a pass and look forward to calmer waters in March.

You can also see my recap from last month.

In this post about the Business Librarians Association conference 2026, I’m talking about:

• Conference blogging
• Travelling to the conference
• My previous BLA conferences
• BLA in Brighton
• My BLA members paper
• Live posting from the conference

Conference blogging

It is my tradition when on my way to a conference to write a blog post about said conference. Sometimes I even manage to write a follow up post afterwards about my experiences…

Most recently, earlier this year, I attended the Trollope Society conference – a non-work endeavour – and wrote about Blogging before attending conferences.

Travelling to the conference

Today, I am on my way to the Business Librarians Association conference in Brighton. You’d think that it wouldn’t be too difficult to get there from my home in North London, but there’s always the potential for trains to not be running, meaning that you have to figure out a new route. Thankfully I’m on track now, with a considerable period sitting down on one train, meaning a chance to write!

While I’m a bit frustrated about not being able to get to the conference early for coffee with registration, and meet with the person I’m mentor for, I should at least get there before the opening announcements. The mentor system is one of the many great things about the BLA conference (and probably lots of other conferences too). People who are attending the conference for the first time get matched up with people who have been before.

My previous BLA conferences

I am an old hand at BLA conferences to an extent, and do know the ropes, but I was thinking through how many conferences I’ve been to, inspired by Nicola Dennis’s LinkedIn post. Perhaps it’s because I first attended BLA so long ago, in 2009 in Dublin (when the BBSLG – British Business Schools’ Librarians’ Group – became the Business Librarians Association). I then had a big gap while my children were little, and for other reasons. I have also attended:

• 2016 in London, at Imperial College
• 2017 in Southampton
• 2019 in York
• 2021, online due to Covid, which I presented at and blogged about
• 2022, in Lancaster, which I also presented at and blogged about

It feels like a lot more because I have attended (and sometimes presented at) other events – day long winter conferences for example.

BLA in Brighton

This year’s conference is at the University of Brighton, and is one that I’ve been looking forward to particularly since I haven’t been able to attend for the past couple of years. It will be great to chat with people, hear what’s going on at other universities, meet with suppliers who I struggle sometimes – due to workload – to communicate with as often as I should do. It will also be interesting to hear from the speakers – both keynote talks and members papers.

The theme of the conference this year is “Libraries as Strategic Partners: Collaboration Within and Beyond the Institution”. Strategic collaboration, and the library being seen as a partner and not only as a service are topical my and my colleagues’ work within about outside of the Library at Brunel. In my staff development request form I particularly noted the announced keynote talks on on ‘Embedding Library Expertise in Transnational Education’ on ‘Sylla: the matchmaking tool to discover Open Access Resources’.

The social parts of the conference (ahem, networking) will be wonderful – lots of coffee breaks, a yummy lunch on the full day on Thursday, excursions in Brighton and fancy evenings – a quiz and a gala dinner.

My BLA members paper

I will be presenting at the conference on Thursday, about my experiences with the EBSCO database platform over the last few years. The title of my members paper is ‘Hedging Search Bets: Rolling with the changes as databases are updated while continuing to advocate for systematic searching’. In it, I’m attending to talk about:

• Experience with EBSCO Business Source databases – both mine and other attendees
• Learning to use EBSCO in greater depth, through work on systematic reviews
• Challenges with the move to the new EBSCO platform last year (which I have written about, in Saving database searches and EBSCO changes: adjusting and preparing)
• Things I like abot EBSCO
• The influence that my learning, and changes in the platform, have had on teaching and support
• The Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) Academic Journal Guide, and how these journals could be searched within in the EBSCO database Business Source Premier
• Search hedges (hence the title of the the presentation!)

I’ve spent lots of time developing my slides over the past couple of weeks, having written a proposal months ago. There are many topics that I’d love to go into detail about, but I will have to be strict with myself. Maybe things for people to ask me questions about… I haven’t run through the presentation yet, but will be doing that tonight – after food and drink at the conference quiz!

Live posting from the conference

As I do at just about all conferences and events I attend, I will be posting on BlueSky throughout the conference, on this occasion using the hashtag #BLA26 – it has been good to see others doing the same already, and to see how the wonderful BLA committee are using and promoting the conference hashtag. (I keep track as much as I can of all hashtags from library and related events on the Library Conferences on BlueSky page). I know there’s also going to be content on LinkedIn.

Thank you to the amazing Business Librarians Association committee for all the work they’ve done to put the conference together. I will finish this post now, in the hope of getting it published before the conference actually starts. Also hoping I get there in time to have a coffee first! (I didn’t manage to publish this blog post or have a coffee before the conference, but I did get there on time for lunch!).

Note: I am aware of the value of having images in blog posts, but what I’m writing about isn’t always a very visual topic. So I have had the idea to choose an image of stained glass, from my husband’s website, which relates to the theme of the blog post. I have chosen the image for this post as the flower petals point in different directions, making me think of all the directions I’m inspired by in business librarianship, and at the conference.