Nathalie Cornée & Kat Hart

Citations aren’t the only way research shows up in policy. Sometimes it’s a named researcher, a nod to “the evidence,” or a reference tucked into the text with no formal citation at all. Kat Hart and Nathalie Cornée dug into Overton’s data to find out how often that happens, and what it means for how we understand research’s reach into policy.

When we want to know if research has influenced policy, we usually turn to citations. They’re easy to spot and easy to count, so it makes sense that they’ve become the go-to signal for research influence.

But citations are only part of the story. Policymakers don’t always follow academic conventions. Sometimes they name a researcher directly, reference a report rather than the paper behind it, or they simply gesture at “the evidence” without pointing to anything specific at all.

So, we set out to ask a simple question: if we look past formal citations, what else might be going on? Using Overton’s data, we compared the scale of formal citations against these more informal mentions and tried to get a sense of what the gap between them might look like. This is an exploratory pilot rather than a definitive study, as the sample is far too small to draw firm conclusions. We hope its value lies more in how it reframes the question of what counts as ‘research engaging with policy’ (and vice versa) in the first place.

Why this matters right now

Definitions of research impact are shifting. A recent Australian study published on LSE’s impact blog made a useful point on this: institutional definitions of impact often don’t match how researchers actually work (O’Connor et al., 2026). Instead of asking “did this have impact?”, the authors suggest asking “what value does this create, and for whom?” It’s a small shift in framing, but it moves the conversation from proving impact to understanding it.

If citation counts alone don’t capture the full picture, what other signals should we be paying attention to?

How we approached it

We used the Overton Index as our starting point. At the time of the study, Overton indexed over 27 million policy documents from more than 190 countries and 3,100 sources, spanning everything from intergovernmental organisations like the UN and WHO to NGOs, think tanks, national governments, as well as regional and local bodies like Canadian provinces and UK devolved nations.

For the pilot itself, we kept things deliberately focused. We took a random sample of 50 UK government policy documents from 2025 and used Overton’s AI classification to pull out document type, length, and authorship. Then came the manual part: we read and coded every single document by hand.

This was a conscious choice. Automated tools are good at catching formal citations, but they miss the less obvious ways research shows up in policy text. We wanted to capture all of it, so we built a coding framework covering two broad categories:

1. Objects: the types of evidence referenced, such as peer-reviewed publications, policy evidence, or informal knowledge transmission material like blog posts and policy briefs.
2. Actors: the people and organisations referenced, such as research organisations, named researchers, funders, or in-house policy experts.

Figure 1. Workflow for identifying and classifying attention to actors and objects in UK government policy documents.

For each one, we recorded whether it was a citation (a formal, traceable reference) or a mention (an informal acknowledgement with no formal citation attached). Where a document referenced several things together, we logged each one individually rather than lumping them into a single entry. Across just 50 documents, that added up to over 2,200 individual references, which gave us plenty to work with despite the small sample size.

What we found

Policy talks to policy more than it talks to academic research

Across our sample, we identified 2,244 objects and actors in total. Policy actors (think tanks, government bodies, IGOs) and policy evidence (past reports, transcripts, consultation outputs) were by far the most common categories in our data, together with in-house research accounting for around 75% of everything referenced.

Peer-reviewed publications, by comparison, made up just under 5% of all references. Generic, non-specific nods to “experts” or “previous research”  outnumbered them, at around 9%. In other words, plenty of documents acknowledge that evidence exists somewhere, without pointing to anything specific.

Citations and mentions tell different stories depending on what’s being referenced.

Peer-reviewed articles were the type of evidence most likely to receive a full, formal citation. Commissioned research told a different story: it often got absorbed into the narrative (“the data suggests”, “interviews found”) with no formal attribution at all. Policy outputs sat somewhere in between, appearing as both citations and mentions in meaningful numbers.

Across the whole sample, mentions were consistently more common than citations.

Who wrote the document matters as much as what it says

Referencing patterns varied a lot depending on who authored the document. Our five most prolific authors in the sample were the Department for Education, the Law Commission, UK Government more broadly, the Ministry of Justice, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) together with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA). Each had a distinct pattern of what they referenced and how often.

A working paper from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, written by commissioned academics, leaned heavily on peer-reviewed citations, as you’d expect. A similar paper from Technopolis, a consultancy commissioned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), leaned instead on funder acknowledgements and commissioned research. Same document type, same broad government context, very different citation behaviour.

Longer documents don’t necessarily cite more

We also tested the intuitive assumption that longer documents would contain more citations. They don’t, at least not cleanly. Some of the highest citation counts did appear in longer documents, but plenty of short documents cited heavily too, and plenty of long ones cited very little. There’s no straightforward relationship between page count and citation volume in this sample.

Even formal citations don’t always make it into a bibliography

Most documents in our sample didn’t have a formal bibliography at all, relying on footnotes instead. And even where a reference qualified as a formal citation, it only had roughly a 50/50 chance of actually appearing in a bibliography rather than just the body text. Citation habits clearly vary a lot from one policymaker to another.

The research being cited mostly comes from a small number of places

Of the peer-reviewed research we identified, half came from UK universities alone, 43% came from international institutions, and the rest reflected UK and international collaborations.

What this means

A few things stood out consistently across the sample:

• Policy actors and policy evidence dominate what gets referenced in policy documents, well ahead of peer-reviewed academic research.
• Some documents and document types are far richer sources of citations than others, and a handful of outliers account for a disproportionate share of all references.
• Mentions turned out to be the more common form of attention across nearly all reference types.

Taken together, these early findings suggest that citation counts alone may only capture a part of how research reaches policy.

Where we think this work is genuinely useful is in how it reframes the question. Right now, most tools only ask whether a policy document cited a piece of research or not. Splitting that into citations and mentions lets us ask a more useful question: how is research actually showing up, even when there’s no formal reference at all? That feels like a real gap worth exploring.

The coding framework itself, sorting references into different types of evidence and different types of actors, and tagging each one as a citation or a mention, is a first step towards making that visible. It gives us a way to describe the kinds of engagement that citation counts alone may miss, so it’s a starting point for more work.

This also fits with a broader pattern often noted in research impact literature: that scholarly expertise tends to reach policy indirectly, through reviews, consultations, and expert commentary, rather than through direct citation. That raises a genuinely open question: how much of what we’re seeing is a passing reference, and how much reflects real engagement with the research itself?

Being able to tell the difference matters if we want to understand not just whether research is being used, but how and why.

Where we go from here

This was a small, exploratory pilot, and we’re upfront about its limits. Fifty documents from one country over one year is a start, not a conclusion.

Next, we’d like to scale up the sample across a wider, more representative set of countries using an LLM to help with the coding. We’d also like to track whether the balance between citations and mentions is shifting over time and compare document types more systematically to understand whether citation behaviour is driven more by document function or by the authoring body. Beyond that, we want to develop ways to assess the depth of engagement behind a reference, not just whether it exists, and look at whether these patterns differ across policy domains, comparing something like health policy against education policy.

If you have thoughts on this work, or you’re doing something similar, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at nathalie@overton.io or kat@overton.io.

References

1. O’Connor, R., Malde, S., Russell, W., & Haviland, M. (2026, March 23). We should focus less on research impact and more on research value. LSE Impact Blog. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2026/03/23/we-should-focus-less-on-research-impact-and-more-on-research-value/

About the Authors

Nathalie Cornée helps the research and policy community around the world get the most out of Overton. She joined in 2023, bringing more than 20 years of experience across the pharma, research, and academic library sectors, always focused on highlighting the significance of research and supporting the researchers behind it, including through bibliometric analysis. She takes a practical, hands-on approach to helping users find the data they need and make sense of research impact.

Kat Hart is a Senior Analyst at Overton, where she curates policy data and uses bibliometrics to explore evidence-use patterns worldwide. Alongside this, she’s a PhD researcher at the University of Nottingham, studying UK water governance. She previously worked as a knowledge broker in UK higher education, focused on ‘what works’ in connecting academic research with public policy.  

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

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/74r3r-67451

Evil Wizard Simpkin Sowerbutt sets out to create a dragon as loyal as a dog. Much to his dismay, he instead creates an embarrassingly fluffy dog who is as fierce as a dragon. Banished by the wizard, Dragon Dog proves his fierce nature to all when he cannot be contained by locks, goons, or spells inspiring fear in all who behold him.

Until he meets a fluffy lamb who is lost. Dandelion’s shepherd told her to find a dog to help find her way if she ever got lost. So of course, she asks Dragon Dog for help. On the way back to her flock, Dragon Dog tries show Dandelion how to be fierce but instead the little lamb shows Dragon Dog how to be fluffy and find a home for himself where both his fierce and fluffy sides are fully appreciated in Dragon Dog (2026) by Suzanne Lang and Max Lang.

Find it on Bookshop.

Bright colors and a cartoony art style compliment the silly vibe of the text’s character names. The artwork also undercuts potentially stressful moments in the narrative to make them more palatable for nervous readers such as when Sowerbutt initially locks Dragon Dog in a bleak dungeon.

Spacious page spreads with large full-color artwork and dynamic text placement keep the focus on main characters Dragon Dog and Dandelion as they navigate trails, obstacles, and Dragon Dog’s old wizard nemesis.  Dragon Dog proves friendship is the ultimate magic in this story where opposites really do attract.

Catching up

Here are three 2026 articles and a new blog post relevant to liaison work:

1.

Zai, R. III. (2026, September). Information literacy outside of academic libraries: A descriptive analysis of the literature external to library and information sciences. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 52 (5). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2026.103314 

Robert Zai III of Northern Kentucky University investigates how the ACRL Framework is cited and discussed outside of the library science literature. The analysis is deep and complex. One conclusion: “…the findings of this study suggests that the accumulated work following their publication [of the Standards and Framework] have been disproportionately small as compared to the quantity of other pedagogy and teaching and learning articles.” Zai suggests a structural problem: only academic librarians created the Framework; disciplinary experts were not consulted. 

2.

Libby, A. G., Tingelstad, C., & Harris, R. (2026). Weathering the storm: A case study in managing staffing challenges. The Reference Librarian, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2026.2716246 

Compare this to #1 and #8 in my “Recent Readings” post from early August. (This article came out a week later.) Friends down at UNC Charlotte write about their responses to a staffing shortage just as the campus achieved R1 status. Solutions included cross-training, shifting liaison roles, time management and reprioritization, team collaboration, and emphasizing staff wellness.

3.

Narvaez, M. (2026). Junior achievement: A perfect service opportunity for business librarians. College & Research Libraries News, 87(1), 33. https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.87.1.33 

Does our engagement with entrepreneurship need to be limited to adults? At the Utah Financial Empowerment Coalition: 2023 Women in Money Conference, Marina Lee Narvaez of the University of Utah connected with a local Junior Achievement leader and decided, no. “My involvement with JA extends our academic library’s reach to include our community’s school-aged children and reinforces the University of Utah’s commitment to generating new innovations.”

4.

“Getting the most value from the Dewey subscription: a look at institutional subscription trends”
Dewey Data blog post by Taylor Butler

How are faculty using the data sets in their Dewey Data subscriptions? Which data sets are getting used the most? What are download patterns? What departments are using the product? (Don’t we wish that WRDS would share data like this sometime?)

Today’s topic

I might be in a rut for naming posts about liaison engagement, but instead I’ll save face by declaring, it’s a series! 

• What do you tell PhD students at their orientation?
• What to tell MBA students at orientation
• and this post.

Haha. Let’s add one related post:

• What are your liaison elevator pitches?

The beginning of the semester, especially the fall semester, is always an interesting time for library liaisons. Orientations, curriculum planning, and opportunities for proactive engagement can keep us busy. Relationship building we’ve pursued with our academic units can pay off with invitations to events or to join Canvas for a class. We might have to prioritize our projects leading up to the new semester. But not every engagement project is successful, and some academic departments may never engage much with you despite your best efforts (if so, don’t take it personally).

A core aspect of effective engagement is customizing your message to each audience. (Yes, I’m talking about market segmentation – it’s ok for academics to learn from marketing best practices.) The “liaison elevator pitch” post gets into this. First year students, upper-level undergraduates, professional master’s students, PhD students, teaching instructors, tenure-track faculty, tenured faculty, deans, the career services center, etc. – they all have different needs. We can’t of course create fliers and LibGuides for every possible segment. However, each summer we can be thoughtful and intentional about the messaging in our faculty engagement plans.

Welcoming new faculty

For me, that process begins with collecting the names of the new hires in the business school. The department heads here have 11-month appointments and so are usually around in summer when I ask who their new colleagues (instructors and tenure-track) will be. The business school’s instructional technology consultant, the amazing Morgan Robinson, also knows who’s new and Morgan kindly shares her list too. 

I open the message I used the previous summer and consider any changes. (There is an example on the pitch post.) A positive and welcoming tone is important. As is brevity. We know how busy faculty are as they prepare for the fall semester, especially if they are moving to Greensboro, are teaching certain classes for the first time, and have research projects underway (if they are tenure-track).

I email the new faculty in early August, a couple of weeks before classes begin. Often I don’t hear back from the new hire, but then will get a reply in September or October with a thank you followed by a question or request. Makes me feel good.

Writing a faculty newsletter

In late summer, I begin drafting a newsletter that I will share with all the faculty and staff in the business school. (Yes, that’s a broad population regarding segmentation but hopefully at least one topic will be of interest to someone.)

What to include can require much thought and tough decisions, especially since, again, brevity is good. Links and screenshots are important. I usually wait a few weeks into the semester, hoping that the faculty are more likely to have time to look at my content a few weeks into the semester. 

My Fall 2026 newsletter is posted although I haven’t emailed the b-school faculty and staff about it yet. I’m waiting for SimplyAnalytics to release its new PUMS dataset, which will be in the basic package. Should be a week or two.

Yes, I know my the newsletter has room for improvement, but there’s that accurate cliche about perfection being the enemy of Getting Things Done (and keeping us from moving on to our next liaison project deadlines).

Speaking to the faculty

Finally, I asked the business school dean, Dr. Joy Bhadury (long a library – and librarian – supporter) if I could say a few words at an all-school meeting this fall. He replied yes and suggested I come to the first meeting of the year (August 28, tomorrow as I draft this section). 

I don’t ask to attend faculty meetings frequently. I prefer these all-faculty meetings to department meetings. More efficient and better return on investment? Although I might lose the opportunity to be more specific in my pitches, for example, promoting supply chain databases to our Supply Chain Management department. 

Library deans and best practice guidelines for liaisons often identify faculty meetings as evidence of successful liaison engagement. I won’t argue with that, even though I usually focus on highly customized, one to one messaging regarding a class or research project.

For this all-staff visit, I asked two of my amazing colleagues to join me and use most of the 30 minutes allocated to the library agenda item: Anna Craft, our Scholarly Communications Librarian, and Trevor Wylie, our new Collections Strategist. Anna will talk about our “author pay” funding options for open access publishing (more business school faculty have been asking about that recently); Trevor will talk about trends in academic publishing and the state of our collections budget. 

In the 4-5 minutes I will take, I will introduce myself, summarize my roles for the b-school, and tease my upcoming newsletter (example, our new Emerald case collection). Then I’ll introduce Anna and Trevor.

How did the meeting go?

The meeting began with introductions of the new hires, the people I had emailed a few weeks ago. It was nice seeing them in person. 

I think all three of us did a good job. By Monday afternoon, Anna has received several follow-up emails regarding open access. One professor asked about sharing Anna’s slides with their graduate students.

Trevor got requests for collections needs. Scopus came up. (We cancelled that in response to a big pandemic-era budget cut.) 

Dean Bhadury invited me to work with a b-school team (including Morgan) to explore what we should do when our two-year Scite license runs out next spring. I mentioned that earlier that day, I received a request from a group of PhD students about recommendations for using AI for academic literature searching. I’m glad the library is expected to be part of those conversations.

I attended the remainder of the meeting and learned some useful things about b-school enrollment trends and strategic priorities. There was also a final round of informal networking afterwards, including congratulating one of the department heads for announcing their upcoming retirement. 

Blog Posts:

• Loathe at First Sight by Suzanne Park: A Review
• Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown by Candace Fleming: A Non-Fiction Review
• Summer Break

Read:

1. The Paragon Games by Dhonielle Clayton
2. Tendrils: A Lady Lovely Locks Novel by Carrie Harris
3. Stinetinglers 5 by R. L. Stine
4. The Blood Queen by Sara Raasch and Beth Revis
5. The Lost Compass by Alexandra Ott
6. Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett (audio)(owned)
7. Love Beyond a Reasonable Doubt by Swati Hegde
8. Of Swamp & Sea, Volume One by Mia Jay Boulton and Laurel Boulton
9. The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
10. Insomniacs After School Volume 1 by Makoto Ojiro
11. Eva Evergreen, Semi-Magical Witch by Julie Abe

How My Month Went:

Not going to lie. It’s been a long summer. I have been hearing that lot of people feel the same way so I think it’s definitely something in the air and the general state of the world. And I hope we all make it through soon. This month felt a lot of catch up. I have been in an ongoing struggle to get to a place where I can pay the rent at the top of the month with my first paycheck. But things keep happening. I had to ask for a lot of help from friends and from the GoFundMe but I do feel like the end is in sight even if, as I right this, things are a little tight. The weather (perpetually muggy and clammy here somehow) is also not helping. With a variety of things happening at work I’m already conceptually in fall so I’m excited for the weather to follow suit. My mom’s next infusion is at the end of the month and things are moving along with that. The treatment is still working and she’s overall quite healthy otherwise which is such a gift. It’s still weird thinking about where she was two years ago or last year. But we’re focusing on her being here now.

That said, I remain committed to romanticizing my own life and tried very hard to fill August with as much fun as possible. The month started with bowling for my friend Jessi’s birthday. I’m a terrible bowler and it was very loud but I was excited for the experience as it was my first time. There was a fun all day training at work where I got to work on a tiny cross stitch (life hack: bring a craft project to work meetings!), try out print making for the first time since high school, try screen printing, and watch other people try embroidery and cross stitch (I couldn’t get too involved because I felt like I would bother the actual teacher lol). I also tried fruit shaped mochi and explored Chelsea Market with my friend V (do not visit it enough for how local it is).

In the second half of the month I made Neopets my entire personality: I have been an active player since 2000 and still have my original account and pets. So you can imagine my excitement when I found out Neopets was doing a pop up right here in NYC. There were some events in game leading up to it and then I went with my friend Mindy to check it out. The merch was amazing (to the point that I am even saving the packaging) and then they had a photobooth, claw machines, adoption station (to color Neopets to leave at the adoption center or take home), a trading post, and the day we went a chance to meet the Soup Faerie.

The day after that I saw Six: The Musical: Live before it left NYC movie theaters. It was fun going to a theater I don’t usually visit and, of course, it was great to see Six again–it was a show I had been wanting to see again and I’m so glad I did. Especially now that it’s closing in January. I think I’m a solo movie person now? It’s always really fun?

Last, but certainly not least a Hello Kitty collab hit McDonalds: Hello Kitty x Godzilla! I’ve been having a very good time collecting them and tracking them down with some of my friends at work–we did a group order yesterday and added Pom Pom Purrin to the ranks.

I’m also closing out the month seeing the Labubu exhibit with Gabrielle. We’re excited!

September should be interesting too. Looking ahead the next month includes: opening a new teen space at my library, Practical Magic 2 in theaters!!!! (how many times will I see it???), a brooch making workshop, and hopefully plans with my Virgo friends for their birthdays. Plus Mom’s infusion and regular stuff. See you on the other side.

You can read more about my mom’s health and financial journey here if you’re wondering what that’s all about: https://gofund.me/24d202b71

You can also see my recap from last month.

Drs R.M. Rahadi Soerjo Karni, known to many as Didi, died on 16 August 2026 at the age of 90. With his passing, we have lost a remarkable person and an important figure in the history of the Southeast Asian Library Group (SEALG) and the KITLV/Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. Didi’s work connected people, libraries and collections across Europe, and helped renew the way knowledge about modern Indonesia was collected, organised and shared in Leiden.

His long association with SEALG began at its very start. On behalf of the KITLV, he was one of the founding members present at the meeting held on 5 April 1968 at the University of Hull. From that point onwards, SEALG became an enduring part of his professional life: he attended almost every annual meeting between 1968 and 2002, served as editor of the SEALG Newsletter from 1980 to 1986, and was SEALG chairman from 1996 to 2002.

For many years he also worked on the List of Southeast Asian Libraries in Europe, a project he began in the early 1980s and continued until 2002, with assistance from Nicholas Martland. His contributions to the SEALG Newsletter reflected both his scholarly range and his commitment to library cooperation. Among them were “Indonesian Studies in the Netherlands” in SEALG Newsletter 26 (1983), “Library Automation at the KITLV in Leiden” in SEALG Newsletter 36–38 (1993), and, many years later, “SEALG: Fifty Years in 2018” in SEALG Newsletter 50 (2018).

At the KITLV, Didi was equally important. One of his major achievements was the establishment of the Modern Indonesia Documentation Department, through which he laid the foundations for systematic attention to recent political, social and cultural developments in Indonesia. The department also gave rise to Excerpta Indonesica, a journal containing summaries, prepared by its own staff, of articles from international periodicals. He recognised the possibilities offered by automation and digitisation and became a driving force behind the modernisation of library processes long before this became routine.

Didi was born in Leiden in 1936, the son of a Javanese father and a Dutch mother. He grew up in a family in which Indonesia and Leiden were closely connected. His father, a lawyer and tutor in criminal law, had studied in Batavia and Leiden and strongly influenced his son’s choices. During the war, the family lived in Leiden; later, Didi spent an important part of his youth in Jakarta, where he completed his secondary education. Those years in Indonesia continued to shape him.

Back in Leiden, on his father’s advice, he chose to study Non-Western Sociology. After his father’s sudden death in 1958, a scholarship enabled him to continue his studies. He graduated in 1966 and subsequently worked on the Bibliography of Malaysia and Singapore. Through his contacts with Professor A. Teeuw, he became aware of a major gap in the KITLV’s documentation on Indonesia from the Japanese occupation onwards. With conviction and vision, he initiated a large microfilming project in collaboration with Cornell University, which effectively restored the KITLV’s collection from that period.

It was against this background of dedication, vision and generosity that I had the great pleasure of working with Didi for many years at the KITLV. We got on very well and shared many enjoyable moments. He was deeply erudite, always full of ideas, and remained curious about people, books and new developments. I learned a great deal from him: not only about Indonesia and documentation, but also about the attitude with which such work should be done — with openness, humour, precision and genuine interest. I shall remember Didi with great respect and warmth.

At the annual SEALG meeting in 2018 at the Asia Library in Leiden, Didi concluded his final talk with a poem by the first SEALG chairman, the poet and librarian Philip Larkin (1922–1985):

New eyes each year
Find old books here,
And new books, too
Old eyes renew.

So youth and age
Like ink and page
In this house join,
Minting new coin.

Roger Tol (Chief librarian, KITLV, 1993-2003), with assistance from Jana Igunma.

September brings the start of a new academic year, and with it many of us will be looking at our professional goals and development opportunities. If you’re looking for professional development resources but don’t know where to start, The Bibliomagician now hosts a page listing over 20 resources for bibliometricians, librarians, and information professionals looking to upskill! 

The page can be found here or under the Resources drop down menu in the navigation bar.

This casually maintained page is not exhaustive and while some resources are specifically targeted towards bibliometric skills, there are others which are applicable to scholarly communications work and academic librarianship in general! 

The Bibliomagician and LIS-Bibliometrics committee do not endorse any of the listed resources and merely provide this collection for your perusal and consideration. We welcome suggestions to the list but reserve the right to curate it as we see fit. 

We hope that this provides inspiration and encouragement to our community to continue learning and growing!

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

In this post about attending the Evidence Synthesis Institute conference in Minneapolis, I discuss:

• Debriefing post-conference
• Conference talks and open access notes
• My own presentations (including slides and recordings)
• Value of presenting
• Getting to know the Twin Cities

Debriefing post-conference

It is my last full day in Minnesota, the end of the trip that was instigated due to me attending and presenting at the Evidence Synthesis Institute conference. I’m writing this in a place called Milly’s (on Washington Avenue South in Minneapolis, in case anyone is interested), tasting some delicious drinks and finishing (just finished – hence switching to writing this blog post) the book that I started on my journey here, a week ago.

Conference talks and open access notes

Live note-taking

I didn’t do much reading in the first few days of my trip as the time was spent preparing for and attending the wonderful conference. I’m not going to try and reflect at this point on all the presentations at the conference, but I did write about them while they were happening, in posts on BlueSky, with the #ESIcon24 hashtag (as I’m ‘campaigning’ for in my Library conferences on BlueSky initiative!). These are notes that I’ll refer back to, along with the slides when we get them, and I hope they’ll be of use to other people too.

Keynote speakers

The conference had knowledgeable, experienced and inspiring speakers for the both the keynote talks:

• Jaron Porciello, whose talk was titled Let’s push science for solutions (my notes from this talk start here).
• Whitney A. Townsend, whose talk was titled Growing your evidence synthesis experience (my notes from this talk start here).

Many talks

The talks and panels from the many other attendees were also great (perhaps I’ll spotlight some of these in a future blog post – for now, see the conference abstracts and search for speakers’ names on BlueSky to find my notes (at least for the talks I was able to attend – there were some parallel sessions).

My own presentations

Presentation preparation

In addition to the conference being expansive, I actually enjoyed (in a weird way) the intense experience of sitting in a hotel room editing and then practicing my three presentations (the reason for doing three presentations was one of the things I write about in the blog post I wrote on the journey over here, An Evidence Synthesis conference journey).

When practicing my presentations, and trying to decide which parts I could cut to ensure that I could keep to time, I recorded them on Panopto (the primary software we use for recording lectures at my university). This was partly to develop what I would say and reduce (slightly) the umms and ahhhs, and also to ensure I could stick to time.

I practiced using PowerPoint coach for the first time (kind of ironic considering that I developed the presentations on Google slides – I was able to export them) and found this useful in highlighting where I was hesitating or reading from the slides too much. Though I don’t know if it really did reduce my hesitations – there’s quite a lot that I’ve removed from the transcriptions when editing after the conference!

My presentation slides and recordings

I have all three presentations ready to share, and have linked to the slides and the recordings of two of them below. I’m just waiting until we managed to publish the protocol for the open access systematic review before I put online the full details of it, which are covered in my presentation. The three presentations are:

• Creating a series of Campbell Collaboration blog posts about the Evidence Synthesis Institute
  Abstract, slides and recording
  Thoughts before
• Training on systematic review? Will you be doing that for staff too? I’d find it really useful
  Abstract, slides and recording
  Thoughts before
• Finally working on a systematic review – building experience in a review about open access publications
  Abstract, slides and recording
  Thoughts before
  (I have added a link to the slides and recording for this presentation in June 2024 as our protocol is now live on the Open Science Framework!)

These presentations don’t have quite the same atmosphere as when I was adlibbing at the live events (it’s great to have an audience laugh at your self-deprecating jokes), but do give a good overview of what I’ve been doing.

Value of presenting

I wrote in my previous post about some reasons for presenting at a conference, including:

In my experience if you have presented, or even before you present, this provides a starter topic for people to come up to you in the breaks and ask questions. And then, with the ice being broken, for you to ask questions of them.

This definitely applied at the Evidence Synthesis Institute conference. After I had presented on even one of my topics I had people giving me thumbs up and making nice comments during the breaks. I’ve had a couple of emails from online attendees, which I really appreciate, and even an offer to put me in contact with someone to do with something I’m interested in progressing in (spot the intentional vagueness here!).

At the beginning of the conference I was enjoying myself and learning, but felt that I didn’t know many people. As the days continued, this changed due to:

• The many informal networking opportunities and breaks, including an opening reception where I talked with multiple groups, and a delicious meal on the final evening, at which my table were one of the last to leave!
• Having listened to other people’s talks and being able to comment on what I’d learnt from them.
• Other people coming up to me following my talks.
• Formal activities designed for us to learn from each other and get to know each other. This included roundtable discussions (we had to pick three from many – which reminded me of the pick ‘n’ mix on the final day of my original Evidence Synthesis Institute) and a Bingo card where we had to find people who could sign off as having certain attributes (I mostly initialled ‘Traveled here from outside the United States’ on other people’s cards!).

Getting to know the Twin Cities

Preparing for the presentations, which were all on the same day, the second full day of the conference, and the full conference schedule meant that I didn’t do much exploring the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul) until after the conference.

Outside of Saint Paul

I stayed with friends for a couple of days, went on walks around a lake (where we spotted nesting owls!) and along the Mississippi river; visited the Minnesota History Center where (among other things) I learnt more about native Minnesota communities, including the Dakota and Ojibwe tribes; and walked around the Cathedral of St Paul (just as grand as St Paul’s cathedral in London!). Having had amazing weather on my first day in Minneapolis, it did get very cold, and was even snowing (in April!) on a couple of days.

In preparing me for looking after myself after he dropped me off in the city, one of the friends I was staying me introduced me to the concept of Minnesota Nice -the fact that people in Minnesota are nice and friendly (they are), and I should ask people for help and directions if I need it. This is my inspiration for the title of this post.

Being a tourist in Minneapolis

The last two days on my trip have been spent exploring by myself in Minneapolis, walking the streets, visiting the Mill City museum (really fascinating place – did you know that Minneapolis was the flour capital of the world?) and taking the bus to the Mall of America. I also spent a little time in the evening editing my presentation recordings – hence being able to share them in this post.

The whole experience here – the conference, presenting on my research and experience, exploring a new place that I didn’t know much about, being hosted by fascinating people, has been wonderful. I am very grateful to have had the experience. And also ready to get back home to my family (who I think have coped without me) and to my work inbox, which is full of emails to think about!

Note: I am aware of the value of having images in blog posts, but what I write about isn’t always a very visual topic. So am in the habit of choosing 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 bird flying is indicative of journeys – the physical journey I am on, and the journey in my learning and professional development, through attending this conference.

In this post inspired by my holiday at the 2026 Edinburgh festival, I’m talking about:

• Influence on experiences
• Holiday reading
• Musical theatre
• Links between narratives
• Edinburgh beyond the festival
• Two for one narratives
• Experiencing narratives in an unintended way
• Lots of shows

Influence on experiences

It’s an interesting experience when you’re experiencing a narrative and the experience changes halfway through (or the second time around) due to changes in your other experiences.

This is a fairly standard idea. Each time you reread a book, you’re reading the story differently, because you are coming to it with some knowledge gained from the previous time(s) you read it. And perhaps with more understanding of the people, places, ideas and circumstances, due to other things that have happened in your life, or other narratives (books, films, theatre, etc) that you’ve consumed).

Holiday reading

This thought comes to me again as I’m travelling back from the Edinburgh Festival. On my way to the festival (and before and during), I was reading a book called Not with a Bang, by Temi Oh. I’m in the latter stages of the book while on the long journey back from Edinburgh to London. This book is kind of an apocalypse book, with a lot of the characters’ lives beforehand and during too. Definitely a literary novel.

Musical theatre

Among many aspects of Not with a Bang that I find interesting is the fact that one of the characters (the teenaged narrator, Briar) has a history and current experience with the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods. The musical theatre aspect piqued my interest as my son is very into musicals, with career aspirations in this area (he was recently in a teen production of Everybody’s Talking about Jamie).

But the book interests me even more now as, on our last full day at the Edinburgh Festival, one of the shows we saw was Into the Woods. This is a show that I had not previously seen before, and I only had the vaguest idea of it relating to fairy tales, due to seeing the current production in London advertised.

The production that we saw at the Edinburgh festival was well done – the acting and the singing were wonderful. Though I had issues with the acoustics – sounds of boots on the floor as the large cast traversed the stage (which – I’m told – was a combination of in the round and proscenium arch) – my children didn’t have a problem with this, so it may have been due to my mid-40s hearing challenges!

However I struggled with the story – it seemed muddled, confusing and rushed. Retelling of stories I know, and cross-over between and merging of multiple narratives would usually be my cup of tea (well, coffee). I love sci-fi and fantasy, and children’s fiction, enjoy fan-fiction, and did Comparative Literary Studies for my undergraduate degree. But Into the Woods didn’t work for me – I didn’t know the overarching story or the songs beforehand, and, especially in the second half, most of the characters seemed to die in quick succession.

In the production we saw, there was a standing ovation, and I think not just for the strong music and voices, acting, costumes and production. There were many others in the audience who clearly loved the story. I think the difference may have been that they knew it already, and were coming to Into the Woods not for the first time. I’m realising now that my feelings about this musical are probably similar to how I feel if I see a Shakespeare play without having studied it or seen it previously. I don’t feel like this with all shows that are new to me, even ones with unusual storytelling, such as The Last Five Years, which I also saw for the first time at the festival.

Links between narratives

Back now to my reading of Not with a Bang. As I’ve been reading the latter section of the book, I’ve realised that it isn’t only that the protagonist is talking about Into the Woods; the story is probably loosely based on the musical (in part at least – having now finished the book, I’m less certain of myself). The celestial object (planet?) coming close to the Earth and causing chaos is analogous to the giantess (of the Jack and the Beanstalk element of Into the Woods) for example.

I had no idea of this before I saw the musical, and if I hadn’t happened to have been in Edinburgh and watching Into the Woods (among many other musicals) while reading, the analogy would have passed me by. Another example might be being able to read and enjoy Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed without knowing it is a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Perhaps also Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible (though looking at the description, that’s more obviously Pride and Prejudice).

Even more relevant to another Edinburgh experience I want to mention is Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw being a retelling of Anthony Trollope’s Framley Parsonage. As a result of reading Tooth and Claw, I have gone on to read lots of Trollope books, joined The Trollope Society, and even gone to a conference!

Now that I know that I’m reading someone else’s retelling of Into the Woods (and a retelling by an author who I like), I’m suddenly keen to see the musical again and decide whether my dislike was due to the circumstances of not knowing the songs or the story beforehand.

Edinburgh beyond the festival

One my aims while in Edinburgh was to visit Transreal fiction (a sci-fi and fantasy bookshop) to buy a couple of Jo Walton’s newer books which haven’t been easily available in the UK. I bought some books:

and have become immersed in the potential multiple worlds, knowledge and lack of knowledge of worlds of Everybody’s Perfect (I’m early on in this book now – will be interesting to see if I have the same interpretation after reading).

It was the random discovery of Jo Walton’s My Real Children (another book with multiple narratives), some years ago on the bring and take shelves at the academic library where I work, that brought me back to being an avid reader with a wide range of authors and fictional worlds that I regularly read. I had become a very occasional reader of fiction chapter books when my children were little, with most of my reading for several years being picture books, parenting books and parenting blogs.

Two for one narratives

An ongoing discussion in my family, as we attended one theatre production after another, was the reason for and meaning of the stories within stories.

A famous one is the story in Matilda of the acrobat and the escapologist, and their daughter being poorly treated by her aunt. This, of course, is a narrative device for telling the story of Miss Honey’s childhood. Another example from our Edinburgh viewing is The Schmuel Song in The Last Five Years. The relevance that this fairytale detour has on the plot of the musical about the development and breakdown of a romantic relationship is something that I hope I’m better able to explain once I’ve seen The Last Five Years a second time; Matilda I have seen multiple times! I won’t now go into the story within a story element in Dear Evan Hansen!

I’m reminded of an embedded narrative example that I love in the book 4321, by Paul Auster. This book tells four different versions of a person’s life, with the narratives gradually finishing as the protagonist dies. In one of lives, we have a story that the protagonist writes, from the perspective of a man’s shoes. This is something that I regularly think of and will look forward to rereading one day.

Experiencing narratives in an unintended way

To go back to my son, and his interest in musical theatre, one of things I’ll often mention to people is that he listened obsessively to the soundtracks of both Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton before seeing them on stage and knowing the story.

This meant that he (and the rest of the family) sometimes had a different interpretation of what a song was about. It also meant that we went into watching these musicals knowing the songs and therefore primed to enjoy the production. Dear Evan Hansen was on the nationwide tour, we saw it at the New Wimbledon Theatre in 2025. Hamilton was the London production at Victoria Palace Theatre, earlier in 2026.

While at the Edinburgh Festival, buying tickets for Dear Evan Hansen was a top priority. I loved seeing it again for a second time, knowing the songs and what was going to happen, and noticing the differences in the production. As I realised that all the teenaged characters (Evan, Connor, Zoe, Jared and Alana) were dually cast, I even wished we could see the show again the next day, when presumably all the actors who were in the background in our production would have the bigger parts.

Another story retelling experience we had while at the festival was when watching the Improv comedy …Earnest? The story here was a production of the Oscar Wilde play The Importance of Being Earnest, which goes wrong when the actor playing Earnest doesn’t turn up. Cue the director interacting with the audience, and attendees coming up on stage to increasingly play more and more of the parts. A great experience to watch, but also interesting to think about the fact that the audience, including those who end up on stage, had varying knowledge of the original play. The man playing Earnest (brilliantly), for example, apparently not knowing the handbag element.

Lots of shows

A full list of everything we saw at the Edinburgh Festival (the things I attended anyway – my husband and son also watched quite a bit of late night comedy):

• Escape Room. A new devised musical – some good acting, but the story needs development.
• Little Shop of Horrors. I’d never seen this musical before – enjoyed.
• The Last Five Years. A first for this musical too, though my son knew some of the songs already. It’s his new obsession I think. A couple’s story told in two directions – his going forward in time, hers going backwards (my kind of thing!). Wonderful singing and character work.
• …Earnest? Clearly a Fringe hit, and great fun.
• Matilda Jr. A really good production – big cast, but didn’t feel too big as Matilda has lots of characters. We missed the songs that were cut, but it made sense and the story fit well into 75 minutes.
• Dear Evan Hansen. I’ve talked about this enough already I think. Will just mention the great live orchestra.
• Into the Woods. Again, have elaborated on this above.
• Max Fulham: Memory Foam. Ventriloquist and comedy. Brilliant. A wonderful last show.

Only eight shows – it felt like more!

I really hope it’s not so long until we go to the Edinburgh Festival again. The last time I went was well over 20 years ago, as a student. It was great to experience it this time with the children who, in their mid-teens, were ideal to take for the first time.

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 this blog post is about theatre, and my husband was told by one of the previous owners that this glass was originally from the London Coliseum Theatre.

This a follow up to a June post that summarized a feasibility discussion with 16 public and academic librarians. After that discussion, a small team – Ciera Williams, Christina Gangwisch, Kellee Forkenbrock, and Min Tong – created a short survey to gauge interest and collect feedback. We tried to make sure that the survey reached public librarians, special librarians, and early career librarians, not just the academics.

The feasibility team said it was ok if I blogged about the survey results. Any opinions expressed outside of the quotations are my own, however. I did not use AI to summarize the comments, fyi. 

Thank you to the 289 people who filled out the survey. 79 people added comments.

(Trip Wyckoff and I continue to collect responses from vendors. We emailed a bunch of them to gauge their interest and their likelihood of helping fund food and coffee in exchange for deeper engagement with the library workers than they get from legacy conferences with exhibit halls.)

The data

What type of library do you work in? 

• Public library: 61 people (21.1%)
• Academic library: 193 (66.8%)
• Special library: 20 (6.9%)
• And a long tail of mostly unique categories.

How interested would you be in attending a national conference specifically for business librarians?

• Very interested: 68.9%
• Somewhat interested: 26.3%

(The remaining 4.8% included this custom answer: “I would not attend but I supervise business librarians and I would be very interested in them attending”.)

Yes, this was largely a self-selecting group, but that’s fine for trying to gauge interest. 

What format would you prefer for a business librarians conference? 

• In-person: 26%
• Hybrid (in-person and virtual options): 44.3%
• Virtual: 18.3%
• No preference: 11.4%

Yes, this data can certainly be interpreted in different ways. Many of the comments addressed this topic, see below.

How likely would your institution support your attendance (funding and/or professional development leave)? 

• Very likely: 51.2%
• Somewhat likely: 32.9%
• Unsure: 10%
• Unlikely: 5.9%Very likely: 51.2%
• Somewhat likely: 32.9%
• Unsure: 10%
• Unlikely: 5.9%

How long should this national conference last?

• One day: 10.7%
• Two days: 17.6%
• Three days: 71.6%

Many commenters have similar opinions on this, usually connected to the possible formats: hybrid and virtual should be short; in-person should be longer.

Which conference topics would be most valuable to you? 

• Business instruction/programming: 77.5%
• Databases, datasets, and other research resources: 77.2%
• AI and emerging technologies: 59.2%
• Information literacy and assessment: 47.4%
• Entrepreneurship and small business support: 52.9%
• Outreach and marketing of library services: 51.6%
• Management and leadership: 27%
• Collection development: 43.9%
• Networking and collaboration opportunities: 55.7%

This isn’t too surprising. But note that “networking and collaboration” was competitive, even though that was the last choice. Another aspect of the formats discussion?

The “write your own” topics are interesting. If we do decide to create this free conference, we will have to be careful to use language that applies to public, academic, and special librarians. Example, programming versus instruction. “Workforce development” should probably have been among our provided choices.

• Workforce development and job help
• Workforce development and career help
• All of these topics are important but especially library instruction
• PTRCA members might provide intellectual property sessions!
• “Career chats” – help people with different levels connect with each other in more structured networking
• Experiential learning
• Programming w/ business topics
• In-depth dives into business topics in the news; one potential model is the Northeast Science Camp 
• In respect to collection development, I think the SOUCABL model is best.
• Vendor exhibits and opportunities to interact with product vendors
• Support for university innovation commercialization
• Engagement through extra-curricular activities (support of case competitions, credentialing/badging, student clubs/organizations, etc.) 

The comments

Here is my attempt to identify themes and spotlight some favorite responses. 

Please do this

“What a great idea! I hope this becomes a reality.”

There were many comments like that. Some came from new business librarians eager to learn at a conference that focuses on their needs, they wrote.

Three or four people not on the feasibility team offered to help, and they provided their email addresses!

Language issues

The feasibility team is not proposing a local, state, or regional conference, but instead a [what?] conference. “National” suggests one country, and one person took offense at that word. What about “coast-to-coast”? “North American”? We used “North American” in the survey title and someone took offense to our use of that phrase, citing travel issues due to politics.

International travel

Several Canadians reported they aren’t travelling to the U.S. and/or wouldn’t get permission to attend a conference in the U.S. right now. 

My friend and past (and future!) Entrelib leader Céline Gareau-Brennan from the University of Alberta told me this before we released the survey. So she and I brainstormed the idea of Entrelib hosting an online panel of Canadian entrepreneurship librarians, maybe in spring 2027, with the goal of keeping North American entrepreneurship librarians connected. Stay tuned regarding that.

(Long ago, Carol and I attended the joint ALA/CLA summer conference in Toronto; that was cool.)

The Entrelib International online conferences have included library workers from additional North American countries, including Mexico and Jamaica. However, I have not witnessed that kind of geographic diversity at in-person ALA or SLA, so I doubt this small, proposed business librarian conference could pull that off either. (Of course, everyone would be welcome.)

The formats

A very interesting topic for many.

There were many comments that a hybrid format would help library workers who wouldn’t be able to travel.

Some commenters connected a format to its appropriate length. Several recommended that a hybrid or virtual conference should be kept short, like only one day. An in-person event would have to be at least two days to justify the travel expenses. Ending the final day at noon provides travel options for some. 

But webinar fatigue is real, someone wrote. “In-person would set it apart and reduce the burnout from too many online trainings in the last 6 years.”

Others wrote about how BRASS already provides a lot of online programming. (Other groups do too, I would add.)

Several commenters noted that hybrid conferences often provide mediocre experiences for both the online and in-person attendees. For example, discussions, community building, networking, and sharing are very hard to pull off. 

“Hybrid conferences are really hard to run. I like the idea of a virtual option, but live streaming in-person sessions usually isn’t the best experience for either party.”

“I find most hybrid conferences (simultaneous/tandem in person and online) to have a sub-par online experience.”

What can be done pretty well in the hybrid format is delivering talks (from lightning rounds up to keynotes). If the main focus of a conference is listening to presentations, then hybrid might work.

In contrast, one commenter noted the Charleston model: a full in-peson experience followed a few weeks later by the online conference. Charleston (as I wrote in Ticker recently) records all the in-person talks for playback in the online conference, with additional Zoom time provided for online discussion. However, the tech and workload demands are high for the Charleston method. Charleston has paid staff and contractors to handle their approach.

What if instead the in-person talks are repeated live online later? Or BRASS hosted online versions of the in-person talks?

“I wouldn’t support an online conference since there is already the BRASS symposiums every six months that already fill that need, at least for academic librarians.”

Please note that I held back linking to this new Ticker opinion piece until the end of this section. Haha. (Kelsey Moore and I actually wrote that last December.)

Types of programming

Several commenters noted their preference for a mix of programming: keynotes, panels, lightning rounds, and posters. One person asked for deep dives into important topics “like BRASS used to do at ALA Summer.” Another would like an “’assume you know nothing’ crash course on business.” 

The need for more informal time to build community came up too. “I think it’d be important to allow for ample time for say breakout rooms or whatever format would allow those of us doing similar work to connect.”

Unique diversity?

“To bring together academic, public, and special/corporate in one place at the same time would be a first.”

Next step after the survey

Next month, the feasibility exploration team will meet again to discuss the survey results from library workers and the vendors. After that, we will hopefully make the next “go / no go” decision. If “go”, the next step might be trying to find a free location to host us in 2028. Another “go / no go” point.

The use of flowers and trees in Thai manuscript art reflects the religious and cultural significance of nature in Thai Buddhism and everyday life. The vibrant colours and detailed designs of floral elements contribute to the overall harmony and elegance of the manuscripts. Common motifs include lotus flowers, which symbolise enlightenment and purity, and other stylised flowers like cotton rose, peony, jasmine and banana blossom that complement the central figures and narratives. They serve as intricate decorative elements to enhance the visual appeal and symbolic meaning of the artworks which typically depict scenes from Jataka tales, the Life of the Buddha, or from the legend of the monk Phra Malai. In animal treatises, poetry books and divination manuals flora is used to represent the natural environment of humans and the beauty of the divine realms alike. Even the backgrounds of such paintings are often richly adorned with floral patterns, blending realism with artistic imagination.

In Thai manuscripts containing Buddhist texts like the Mahabuddhaguna (Ten Perfections of the Buddha) and the legend of Phra Malai, the lotus flower (Nelumbo nucifera / Thai: ดอกบัว) appears frequently as it is a profound symbol of enlightenment, purity, and spiritual awakening (fig. 1). Growing from murky mud into a beautiful bloom high above the water, it mirrors the human journey of spiritual growth: rising above desires and the suffering of cyclic existence to achieve a state of awakened clarity and peace. 

The story of Phra Malai, a monk who travelled to the Buddhist heavens and hells, is usually illuminated by multiple scenes from this legend, including an illustration of a poor man plucking eight lotus flowers in a pond to give as an offering to the monk (fig. 2). Phra Malai then takes the man’s lotus gift to the stupa Chulamani Chedi in the Tavatimsa heaven.

Not only Buddhist scriptures contain images of lotus plants: they are also regularly included in Phrommachat divination manuals where they are described as residences of guardian spirits of people born in the year of the dog (fig. 3) and the year of the pig. In these illustrations, the lotus plants are often depicted in an artificial pool or basin next to a female deity and four types of the zodiac animal of that particular year. Sometimes the deity also holds lotus flowers in her hands.

Another favourite flower to appear in Thai manuscript illustrations is the cotton rose (Hibiscus mutabilis / Thai: ดอกพุดตาน). This popular motif known in Thai as lai phuttan is widely used in Thai art of all periods, although it is thought to originate from China where it is called Fu Rong Hua (芙蓉花). The actual plant is a shrub that can grow 2–5 meters tall with large, layered blossoms that change colour throughout the day – white in the morning, pink at midday, deep pink or red at night, and purple before they abort.

In manuscript paintings we often find this flower in manuscripts containing Buddhist texts, e.g. extracts from the Tipitaka and the Mahabuddhaguna (fig. 4). Depictions of the cotton rose from the early 18^th century (Ayutthaya era) often differ slightly from its representation in paintings from the 19^th century (Rattankosin era) as a result of stylistic developments in that later period which saw an increase of Chinese and European influences. Sometimes, the depiction of the cotton rose in Thai manuscript art is very similar to that of the Chinese peony (Paeonia lactiflora / Thai: ดอกโบตั๋น) (fig. 5). Not only are the Thai names of the cotton rose (dok phuttan) and peony (dok botan) very similar, but it is indeed possible that these two motifs were used interchangeably in art, and it is a matter of interpretation which of the two is depicted.

The night-flowering jasmine (Nycatanthes arbortristis / Thai: กรรณิการ์) appears less frequently than the cotton rose, but it is equally impressive when included in manuscript paintings. One example is present in an illustration of the Vessantara Jataka (fig. 5, right, top) depicting the moment when the Brahmin Jujaka is about to take Prince Vessantara’s children away, to make them servants of his young wife.

The pretty small flowers open exclusively at dusk and drop to the ground before sunrise, leaving small drops of liquid on the leaves, which appear like tears. This may explain its depiction in the context of one of the saddest moments in the Vessantara Jataka. However, in Thai poetry the night-flowering jasmine is also celebrated as an embodiment of beauty, fragrance, and ephemerality. Its white, star‑like blossoms with 5 – 8 petals and bright orange tube are praised for their gentle nighttime scent, refreshing the heart. In classical works such as the Ramakien and Inao, fallen flowers mark quiet, contemplative landscapes. Thai poets of the past have evoked the flower’s charm, fragility, and dreamlike allure.

Images of the silk-cotton tree, commonly also known as kapok tree (Bombax ceiba / Thai: ต้นงิ้ว) are regularly found in Phrommachat divination manuals, where the tree is described as the residence of a female guardian spirit of people born in the year of the hare (fig. 6). In practice, the bright red flowers of this plant function as both an aesthetic and culinary resource, particularly in Northern Thai cuisine. The mature fruits are similarly valuable, as their fibrous “kapok fluff” is used in traditional textile production, especially as fillings of pillows, cushions and mattresses.

As a result of its spiky trunk, the silk-cotton tree also plays an important role in illustrations of the hell realm in manuscripts containing the story of Phra Malai. It can quite easily be identified by its thorns or spikes, and the fruits, which turn nearly black when they are ripe. In the hell scenes of Phra Malai manuscripts one can usually see a hell guard and a ferocious dog chasing a pair of naked adulterers up this tree (fig. 7), a process that is repeated over and over to inflict continuous pain.

A popular plant often found in the background of manuscript illustrations is the wild banana (Musa acuminata colla / Thai: กล้วยป่า). This plant is not only of great importance in Thai cuisine (blossom), but it is also used in herbal medicine, decorative arts and in certain ceremonies. Depictions of the wild banana can be found in Phrommachat divination manuals as the residence plant for guardian spirits of people born in the year of the horse (fig. 8). It also appears in Buddhist manuscript illustrations as background illumination, for example in scenes from the Vessantara Jataka (fig. 9) and other Jataka tales.

A flower resembling the wild magnolia (Magnolia garrettii / Thai: มณฑาป่า) can also be found in Jataka illustrations. This forest tree, native to northern Thailand, Laos and Yunnan, is appreciated for its fragrant flowers and medicinal properties. Although it is not as culturally and ritually significant as its sister, the champak tree (Magnolia champaca / Thai:  ต้นจำปา), its depiction alongside the wild banana in a scene from the Temiya Jataka (fig. 9, left side), where Prince Temiya has become an ascetic teaching his father, may be seen as a positive reference to the beauty of the wilderness surrounding forest hermitages.

On rare occasions, depictions of the cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis, Thai: ต้นสาละ) can be found in Thai manuscripts. One outstanding example is known from a Phra Malai manuscript, dated 1849, where the tree is shown prominently in full bloom in a scene of a man plucking lotus flowers to offer to the monk Phra Malai (fig. 10). Although the cannonball tree is not native to Thailand as it originates from Central and South America, it grows well in the Southeast Asian climate and is often planted at temples and monasteries because many people (wrongly) believe it is connected to Buddhism — namely the tree under which the Buddha was born (which, according to Buddhist scripture, actually was the Shorea robusta  or Sal tree, native to India and the Himalayan regions). However, the cannonball tree is highly appreciated in Thailand and neighbouring countries for the dramatic appearance and fragrance of its flowers.

Another unique example of an image resembling a cannonball tree with fruit is included in a Thai palm leaf manuscript that contains selected chapters of the Vessantara Jataka. While paintings in Thai palm leaf manuscripts are extremely rare, this particular item features forest scenes with animals, mostly on gold background, to highlight the natural beauty surrounding Prince Vessantara’s abode in the jungle. In this illustration, the cannonball tree is not shown with flowers, but fruits which are equally impressive (fig. 11). In the same illustration one can also see a Jack tree (Artocarpus heterophyllus / Thai: ขนุน) bearing fruits, which in real life are widely used in Thai cuisine and herbal medicine. Jack tree wood was also utilised in architecture due to its resistance to fungi and termites.

The Jack tree enjoys cultural significance thanks to the belief that it brings good fortune and support, and it also has a practical connection to Buddhism since its wood and roots were traditionally used to dye the robes of monks. The wood is also a popular material for carving Buddha statues. In Phrommachat divination manuals, this tree is described as the residence of the male Yakkha guardian spirit of people who are born in the year of the monkey (fig. 12).

Palm trees are frequently included in Thai manuscript paintings, and the Palmyra palm, also known as toddy palm (Borassus flabellifer / Thai: ตาล), plays an important role as it is one of the trees whose leaves are used to produce manuscripts. Images of this palm tree can be found in Phrommachat divination manuals where it is named as a residence tree for the male guardian spirit of those born in the year of the rat (fig. 13).

The Palmyra palm is widely recognized as a symbol of local wisdom, sustenance, and endurance. It thrives in Thailand’s dry coastal and inland regions and has been integrated into daily life for centuries as it is used in Thai cuisine, traditional medicine, construction and local crafts and arts. Elephants relish the tree’s fruits, and in doing so they become its most effective agents of seed dispersal. It is no surprise that an elephant treatise from the late 19^th or early 20^th century captures precisely this ecological exchange: an elephant is shown driving its huge tusks against a palmyra trunk to shake down the ripe fruit, even as it simultaneously deposits at its other end the seeds it has recently consumed (fig. 14). The scene presents a strikingly sophisticated understanding of elephant–forest-human interdependence.

The flame tree (Delonix regia / Thai: หางนกยูงฝรั่ง) unfurls a wide, umbrella-like crown of fine, fern‑textured foliage that bursts into striking clusters of red and orange blossoms during the hot season in Southeast Asia. Its fiery bloom coincides with the New Year festival and the new agrarian cycle, making the tree a vivid emblem of renewal, festivity, and seasonal transformation. An image of a tree that resembles this tree is included in an illustration of the Nemi Jataka, where one can see it located outside the palace walls behind the god Indra who invites Prince Nemi to visit the Tavatimsa heaven (fig. 15).

A frequent occurrence in Thai manuscript illustrations are various types of bamboos (Bambusoideae / Thai: ไผ่), often depicted in the background as part of nature scenes. Bamboo is far more than an ordinary plant: it is a material appreciated for its strength and flexibility, therefore it is used in traditional architecture, furniture making and other everyday crafts. It is also an important ingredient in the regional cuisines of Thailand and beyond. In Phrommachat divination manuals a bamboo plant is depicted as the residence of the female guardian spirit of people born in the year of the goat (fig. 16).

The importance of bamboo in the lives of elephants is highlighted in an elephant book with Khmer and Thai text passages, where it appears in almost every illustration of natural as well as domesticated elephants (fig. 17). Elephants in Southeast Asia rely heavily on bamboo as a food source. They spend a large part of their day eating different bamboo species, which are easy for them to digest and provide steady energy. In the past, villagers often planted bamboo to keep herds fed and to help reduce conflict with farming.

Although it is not always possible to identify all the plants in Thai manuscript illustrations – often lack of detail prevents identification, and many may indeed be imaginary plants – it is remarkable how some manuscript painters of the 18th and 19th centuries took great care to create realistic images of the flora that surrounded them. Though not formally trained in scientific botanical illustration, these artists achieved a striking degree of precision in their depictions of plants, capturing colour, form, and proportion with great sensitivity. Of special importance are floral illustrations in Phrommachat manuscripts due to the fact that the Thai names of the plants are mentioned in the text. Equally significant is the painters’ attentiveness to the symbolic meanings of certain plants, placing each species within carefully chosen cultural and religious settings that enriched the textual contents of the manuscripts.

By Jana Igunma, Henry Ginsburg Curator of Thai, Lao and Cambodian, British Library, London

This blog post was inspired by the books of Elisabeth Vilayleck, and I would like to express my gratitude for her advice and encouragement.

Further reading

Chiang Mai University. (2020). ขนุนในความเชื่อของคนล้านนา [Jackfruit in Lanna beliefs]. https://accl.cmu.ac.th/Knowledge/details/1206

[Fine Arts Department]. (2020). พุดตาน: ดอกไม้เทศแห่งกรุงรัตนโกสินทร์  [Phuttan: The exotic flower of Rattanakosin]. Sukhothai: National Museum Sawankhaworanayok. https://finearts.go.th/sawakhavoranayokmuseum/view/39675-

[RSPG]. (n.d.). กรรณิการ์: ดอกไม้หอมเมืองไทย [Kannikara: The Fragrant Flower of Thailand]. https://www.rspg.or.th/plants_data/homklindokmai/hom_data/hom-5.htm

Thongthammachart, A. (2014). ที่มาและพัฒนาการของลายดอกโบตั๋นในงานศิลปกรรมไทย. [The origin and the development of the peony motif in Thai arts]. Master’s thesis, Silpakorn University.  https://sure.su.ac.th/xmlui/handle/123456789/1619

Vilayleck, E. (2021). La voie des arbres dans le bouddhisme: du lotus originel aux grands ficus. Paris: Claire Maisonneuve, librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient.

Vilayleck, E., & Strobel, M. (2011). Les fleurs de la dévotion: ethnobotanique cultuelle au Laos. Luang Prabang: Pha Tad Ke Botanical Garden.

Wales, Q. (1983). Divination in Thailand. London/Dublin: Curzon.

Wong, K. M. (2004). Bamboo: The amazing grass – A guide to the diversity and study of bamboos in Southeast Asia. Kuala Lumpur: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) & University of Malaya. https://cgspace.cgiar.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/d1e0805a-7b62-4e46-ac20-8f3b67c31f5e/content

Register for the LIS-Bibliometrics Conference 2026

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/nggdw-1ra25

Forever playing catch up on posts and fighting off the heat. We’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming in September if not earlier. Go drink some water!

Op 2 oktober organiseert DBNL een symposium over rederijkers ter gelegenheid van de publicatie van 7 18e-eeuwse verzenboeken uit Veere.

De KB was één van de partijen die op 1 augustus meevoer op de Boekenboot om een statement te maken tegen censuur en onderdrukking van LHBTIQ+-stemmen.

Op 1 augustus vaart de KB mee op de Boekenboot. Met deze boot wil de Nederlandse boekenwereld een signaal afgeven dat iedereen zichzelf mag zijn.

Nu is het nog volop zomer, maar de KB heeft al een heleboel leuke evenementen op de agenda staan. Kom bijvoorbeeld naar een KB-College of luister naar de gesprekken in On the spot. 

De KB en Stichting Europeana lanceren een kleinschalige pilot over het opzetten van een gedeelde Europese infrastructuur om miljoenen gedigitaliseerde boeken te delen voor onderzoek en innocatie.

Op 1 juli was de Amerikaanse activist Leila Green Little te gast in de KB om te praten over het belang van vrije toegang tot informatie.

Op 1 juli 2026 gaan de laatste XS4ALL-pagina's offline. De KB heeft zoveel mogelijk van deze websites opgeslagen in de webcollectie.