Changing demand for library business services

Citation

Holt, G. (2001), "Changing demand for library business services", The Bottom Line, Vol. 14 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2001.17014aab.001

Changing demand for library business services

Changing demand for library business services

Keywords: Public libraries, Business development, Research organizations, Library services

Through the past decade, no set of library services has changed more than those we offer to business patrons. Electronic media has stimulated that shift. Electronic media has changed both markets and supplies. For example, to get cheaper, well-educated labor, US banks now outsource paper processing to small towns in Europe, and US information corporations buy customized computer programming in India or Canada. In each example, businesses have reached out to tap service suppliers that are hundreds or thousands of miles away.

In this world of ubiquitous supply and placeless markets, local businesses often choose to substitute distant information sources in place of an area's public libraries. Such substitutions follow a general rule. When the real or perceived price of purchasing information services is less than the time-and-effort price of visiting a library, consumers shift their information sources.

Doctors and lawyers are two obvious examples of the shift. In both professions, time is money, and anything that saves time adds to profitability. Going to the library to do research in paper-based collections is time-consuming and therefore expensive. When MEDLINE and LEXIS-NEXIS appeared, medical and legal professionals used the superior electronic sources rather than their own specialty libraries, nearby college or public libraries.

Many public libraries never had a firm hold on law and medical research, but to use an old cliché about trends, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. As lawyers and doctors have changed their library-use patterns, so too are other businesses changing their information-seeking behavior. Some examples follow:

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  The co-principal of a large city-planning establishment who had been a heavy user of our St Louis Public Library materials, informed staff that he would be visiting far less frequently, because his company had hired a Houston online-search firm that specialized in doing work for planners. Along with convenience and speed, he added another reason as well: "It is easier to justify the cost of an online search firm to clients than it is to justify staff time spent at the library."

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  Executive staff of a large area corporation that used to borrow many general business books from St Louis Public are now fulfilling the same information needs via the Internet. The company researchers use free sources produced by the industry and fee-based information from online vendors. According to this group of former library users, there are four reasons for the shift. First is currency: electronic information is more up to date. Second is immediacy: working from her/his own desk, the staff member can do the necessary research without taking time off for a trip to the library. Third is proximity: the searcher is nearby while doing the research and can talk with colleagues about the search as it progresses. Fourth is breadth of information: in a global age, it takes a library with a large budget to purchase or subscribe to all the international sources that even small companies require for competition in a global economy. Parenthetically, executives in two area companies have told me that they closed their corporate libraries, because the Internet made it possible to access more specialized sources of information, more quickly, and more cheaply than they had previously.

The two examples suggest a generalization: Most local and regional public libraries are losing some types of business users. At the same time, electronic media is providing libraries with new opportunities to serve other area business interests. Here are some examples.

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  SLPL has digitized the ordinances passed by the Board of Aldermen since 1990, along with all license application forms and a list of requirements to obtain such licenses http://www.slpl.lib.mo.us/CityHall/. The three benefits of the Electronic City Hall, as the project is titled, are currency, completeness and keyword searching. Scanning and indexing of other kinds of City documents have broadened citizen access to local government information. Not only did the public benefit, but specialized groups dependent on official government information like attorneys and real estate developers have reaped time savings and increased profits from information found at Electronic City Hall.

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  Local libraries like SLPL and area planning agencies have used geographic-information-system tools to enhance access to environmental and economic information. Such mapping provides visual evidence of location of sewers, water mains and underground electric cables. Other maps array data from census tracts and economic surveys and studies. Still others show economic data important in market assessment. Graphical Information Systems (GIS) are a powerful new tool that can help libraries and other agencies enhance local information, especially for business users.

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  The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh homepage provides another good example of how libraries can improve the quality of individual life while helping local government and non-profit organizations. Under the rubric of the Non-Profit/Government Organizations in Pittsburgh & Southwestern Pennsylvania, the Three Rivers Free Net gathered names, addresses and phone numbers of area agencies and organizations and mounted them electronically http://trfn.clpgh.org/organizations/. This regional system not only helps those seeking services, but assists not-for-profits by expanding their opportunities to build and serve their constituencies.

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  Business development is a solid theme around which to organize local library business services. As large corporations, planning agencies and legal firms have gone online to seek the information they need, start-up entrepreneurs and the owners of expanding small firms need far more information than they can afford to purchase. Small business entrepreneurs need information to develop. Public libraries with the right collections and staff can assist small business entrepreneurs in growing their businesses.

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  Mixed in with these entrepreneurs interested in business development are numerous general users who depend on the library to provide them with information that will help them make important decisions about their individual, family and community life. This group wants information that will help them invest wisely, consume smartly, and stay healthy in this time when US citizens recognize increasingly that caveat emptor is the friendliest greeting they are hearing from their doctors and their health insurance companies. These three collections and service areas structured with staff and collections to provide pertinent consumer information constitute a special business service opportunity for libraries.

As public libraries lose some business users and restructure their operations to better serve others, they ought to consider carefully before extending their operations into other business venues. Here are some examples.

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  Twice, large St Louis corporations that were about to close the doors of their libraries and research centers asked if SLPL would take all their materials and handle all their reference and research questions for a sizable monthly fee. A little study demonstrated that each firm needed much more specialized research skills than any of our public library reference staff could provide. Both companies are now using contract researchers, one in the firm's headquarters city, the other using one quite distant from where the research is actually used.

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  A second refusal occurred when an area newspaper said that they would give us the publication and printing rights to any of their archived issues if we would scan the newspapers into an electronic database that was easily searched. In other words, we had the initial capital costs of creating electronic records, of continuing to add electronic documents to our holdings and of working out and maintaining reference paths into the data along with preparing all of it for keyword searching. This gift horse turned out to be far more expensive than we then could afford. Moreover, the new business alliance would have changed the character of SLPL business reference services in a fundamental way. We have never been sorry that we did not accept the deal.

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  Finally, there is pressure on many of us to emulate New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) http://www.nypl.org/research/sibl/index.html. However, that library is set up to meet the specific business needs of its constituency, which is not the constituency of every public library. The model works better in New York than it will in Rochester, Des Moines or St Louis. Modeling New York business services for smaller-sized metropolitan areas is a little like a good, Missouri community college deciding it will become the academic Harvard of the Midwest.

The theme of this article is like so many others in public library development. As regular business users respond to new electronic opportunities, local libraries lose the allegiance of some business users. Meanwhile, the same electronic forces for change, especially those globalizing supplies and markets, create new opportunities to help smaller firms start up and grow and meet the increasingly complex personal-business information needs of general users.

As we make such shifts, we need to be careful not to take on business services for which our staff are not prepared and which our budget will not stand. Even as we adapt our library's business services, we need to be mindful of the old business adage that there are some deals from which we should walk away.

Glen HoltExecutive Director of the St Louis Public Library, St Louis, MO, USA