Targeting the Powerful: : International Prospect Research

Citation

Law, D.G. (1998), "Targeting the Powerful: : International Prospect Research", Librarian Career Development, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 26-26. https://doi.org/10.1108/lcd.1998.6.2.26.1

These two works form an interesting pair, with different values and perspectives, yet both claiming to be practical pragmatic guides. Targeting the Powerful opens up a completely new world, with a self‐styled new profession of prospect researchers, who appear to inhabit a quite different corner of the universe from most of us ‐ although anyone who has been touched by university fundraising will have some knowledge of what is discussed. Hack is a consultant based in Singapore who used to work in Oxford University. She spends the first half of the book describing how to set up a prospect research organisation to identify people for “one‐to‐one‐marketing” who “are so important [i.e. rich?] that they merit more than the standard letter.” To begin with one needs staff; one clerical assistant for every three researchers; and one researcher for every three solicitation staff. It may console us to know that “candidates with a background in librarianship or information often display many of [the required] skills.” Then one requires a small library at a cost of £30,000 per year. “Ideally you should have your own books as it can be very time‐consuming trekking backwards and forwards to the library … There can be many inconveniences to working in libraries, such as having to leave the building to find a cup of coffee or having to order photocopies. It is also possible that you might go all the way to the library only to find that someone else is using your [sic] book.” There is much discussion of working practices, of ethics and confidentiality and a limp defence of copyright in copies of press cuttings. There is an extensive if somewhat naïve comparison of paper versus CD‐ROM versus on‐line as useful information sources.

The second half of the book is much better and one suspects more useful to most librarians. It provides a useful basic explanation of how to interpret company reports and also describes the different kinds of grant‐awarding foundations. Then follows what is essentially a regional guide to information sources and directories ‐ “fortunately many international reference books are written in English”, along with lists of useful addresses.

The Guide to Additional Sources is a short ninety page report which springs from the Library History Group and is aimed at smaller libraries with historic buildings and/or special collections. It provides a step‐by‐step guide to making grant applications, notes on the major funding agencies and some useful case studies. There is also a review of various other methods of fund‐raising or charging for services, most of which will be familiar to most librarians. These descriptions are enriched with comments from a questionnaire sent out to a large selection of libraries. All in all it is a solid and useful piece of work which is thoroughly recommended.

Both books fall uncomfortably between being textbooks to be read and reference works to be consulted. Both are clearly written and appear up to date. Each inhabits quite different worlds which seem destined never to meet. Few if any libraries will target and stalk individual multi‐millionaires over a period of time (although their parent organisations increasingly do so) as described in the Hack work. Conversely one suspects that the humble collecting box described in the Guide will never feature as a tool to persuade the rich of the value of liberality.