This article is from the May 2004 issue of Update.
In their book Anyone Can Do It: building Coffee Republic from our kitchen table, Sahar and Bobby Hashemi, founders of the coffee shop chain, mention both the useful research they carried out in the City Business Library, and the work done for them by our fee-based service, Business Information Focus. So, our contribution to the setting up of one multi-million pound business has been acknowledged in print. And this has led to more use of our services, by people who have read the book.
The advent of the new year and a new acting librarian, Goretti Considine, has given us the impetus to review our services, our outlook and our plans for the future.
City Business Library is one of Britain’s foremost public business libraries. We are uniquely qualified to meet one of the principal aims of the Corporation of London — to support the City as one of the world’s most important financial centres.
CBL began in 1872 as the Commercial Reference Room of Guildhall Library, becoming a separate library in 1970. It is now one of five libraries provided by the Corporation of London — there are three lending libraries in addition to Guildhall Library (which has vast collections of historical business material) and ourselves.
We work hard to update our services while not losing the best of what we have inherited. We do not underestimate the continuing need for printed sources of information, which we believe will always have a place alongside electronic resources.
Our aim is to make our service more widely known, to keep our considerable more traditional strengths, and to evolve in response to technological innovation, the needs of users and the changing nature of the business economy.
The following are some of the headings under which we are considering our future.
Widening our customer base
In common with many public libraries, we have suffered a downturn in use, so we emphasise that there are no restrictions — we welcome anyone who needs business information. Our users are business people, consultants, job-seekers, companies with limited access to business information, educational and charitable organisations, students and individuals. Being in the City of London, in the centre of the wider metropolis, we are well placed to attract visitors from the whole of London and indeed much further afield.
The City is famous for the large number of national and multinational companies based here, but we know that within a short distance of the library doors there are also many small businesses. One of our aims is to increase use of the library among the latter group, and to provide information specifically for people starting up in business.
Raising our profile
We have a programme of visiting other business libraries in the country (and, indeed, libraries as far afield as New York and Toronto have been taken in by staff members on holiday). What we have learned is that others have come to appreciate the value of marketing what they have to the best advantage. We know that we must do the same.
We need to see with fresh eyes the resources we have: 6,000 UK and overseas directories (we have more overseas directories than the British Library); information about nearly every country in the world for which information exists; details about hundreds of market sectors; 10,000 company annual reports, including those from all companies listed on the UK stock exchange; more than 800 periodicals and newspapers; and this is by no means an exhaustive list. Some of the electronic resources we have are unique in public libraries.
We organise two kinds of visits to CBL — one for personal users during which we tour the library, give out information packs and answer questions about our services; and a longer, more detailed tour for information professionals and tutors.
Recently, we have held two extremely successful open evenings, with help from sponsors who have taken stands in the library to attract customers for their products. It seems that everyone who comes through the doors is impressed with our services.
We would like to raise our profile physically. Being somewhat hidden away along a small passageway that is not marked on most maps, we cannot rely on attracting people who are passing the door. Short of moving to somewhere more visible, we need to improve signage and visibility on our current site.
Improved awareness of our services both within and outside the Corporation is one of our aims. To this end, we are planning to make the library more widely known to every member of Corporation staff, and to promote links with the Corporation’s research department, the Economic Development Unit.
We want to form closer and more formal links with London Business Link; LLDA (the London Libraries Development Agency); the library services of other London local authorities; City and West End-based companies; and library services offered by professional groups.
Responding to user needs
We know that one of the prime needs of our users is for current information. One of our strengths is that we are able to purchase and process titles quickly. Directories are on our shelves within days of publication. If a title arrives from the publisher or supplier in the morning it is on the shelves by the afternoon. We choose suppliers for their efficiency, and negotiate price reductions by dealing with them directly.
Early in 2004 we carried out a detailed survey of users for a fortnight, during which we encouraged everyone who came into the library to fill in a questionnaire. As an incentive, we offered a prize of a substantial amount in vouchers from a well-known high street store. The completed forms are now being analysed by the department’s research officer.
City Business is our quarterly newsletter, available in the library and via email. We have a ‘contact form’ so that we can let users know when we receive the latest editions of directories and some serials.
We carried out a detailed analysis of all our periodicals, making sure that what we take is relevant and cost-effective. As a result of customer responses we got sample copies of some suggested titles, and added some to stock or gave reasons why we were unable to do so with others.
A large part of the stock has recently been rearranged, which meant a lot of work behind the scenes. We have integrated all the information we have for individual countries with the relevant directories, so that readers no longer have to go to two different places in the library for resources on, for example, Bhutan, Burundi or Belgium.
After considering the topics many people enquire about, we are revising our printed help guides. They used to have a formal approach, giving details of stock in various areas. The new ones are more focused on the kinds of questions people ask: ‘I have a job interview…where should I look for information?’ or ‘Where can I find information on starting a business?’
Working towards a 24-hour service
The catalogue is searchable on the web, so can be accessed worldwide. CBL is represented in departmental discussions on improving the web pages in order to make them more informative and user-friendly.
We are hoping to give electronic access to several research tools we use in the library. These are: detailed indexes to our company annual reports holdings; an alphabetical and subject index to our periodicals and newspapers; and the set of library help guides giving information about our services and how to research certain topics.
We are also considering making public our in-house research index. This is a database (maintained on Cardbox) which is updated daily and has details of 7,000 articles in periodicals, newspapers and market research reports in the library. It is an invaluable tool for the Enquiry Desk staff, and would be useful in helping members of the public to get the most out of our stock.
Emails are always replied to within 24 hours, either by answering the question or referring the enquirer on to other sources of information or to our fee-based research service, Business Information Focus. We belong to Ask a Librarian, and are exploring the possibilities of linking up with other business libraries in different time zones.
Providing a research service
Business Information Focus is staffed by one Assistant Librarian full time on a rota basis, and is managed by the Focus librarian. We are fortunate that this is considered by the department to be a worthwhile use of resources, when similar services have been disbanded. Colleagues in Focus have full access to the library, as well as hosted online databases and the historical information held in Guildhall Library.
No membership is required, and individuals or companies can use us just once, although many companies come back again and again. The service often receives appreciative comments such as, ‘Thank you for your help in putting me on to the right company name — I know where to come in the future when I need business information’ (from a small business in Cheltenham), or ‘I would like to thank you personally for all the helpful service you have given us’ (large provider of pensions, investments and life assurance products). Even very large City firms with access to vast amounts of information find that they need some of the resources we have here.
The preliminary work is free of charge, and the fees we do charge are reasonable (especially to those who know how much information costs!) and always agreed in advance with the customer. The jobs are very varied, but we are providing a growing number of company lists. The use of the service has been increasing as we have been more active in marketing it, and many people turn to us when they discover the internet is not infallible, or their local or company libraries simply do not have the resources to answer their questions.
Training and encouraging staff
As important as all the information we provide is the team of qualified and experienced staff the library employs, who deal with enquiries in person, over the phone and by email. They are supported by the serials team whose job it is to deal with more routine enquiries and to help users with the photocopiers.
The Corporation invests heavily in training. All members of staff of the department will undertake courses (from the Corporation’s own accredited desktop training service) to obtain the ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence). Staff training needs are identified in annual appraisal interviews and co-ordinated by the departmental personnel and management teams. All professional staff joining CBL have a clearly set out training programme, which includes visits to more than a dozen relevant libraries, such as that of the Bank of England, the National Statistics Library & Information Centre and the library of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. If we can show that a visit or course is relevant to our jobs, it is unlikely to be refused.
The Enquiry Desk team has been encouraged to specialise in different areas of stock, and to keep up to date with developments in those areas by membership of different interest groups such as SCOOP; subscribing to relevant emailing lists; visits to specialist libraries; and scanning periodicals and publications lists related to those areas.
All staff know that they are welcome to contribute ideas towards building up a world-class service at CBL in line with the City’s vision for the future.
This is an exciting time for the growth of the service, with staff looking forward to embracing the coming challenges. CBL staff are very proud of the consistently high level of service offered and are keen to promote it to relevant individuals, organisations and businesses.
In aiming to provide a high-quality service, we bear in mind some of the well-known mantras — improve 1,000 things by one per cent, rather than one thing by 1,000 per cent; realise that customers are interested in outcomes, not processes; but, above all, delight the customer.
Marianne Howell is an Assistant Librarian, City Business Library (cbl@corpoflondon.gov.uk).