Business & IP Centre, Newcastle

Last week, I was in Newcastle briefly and had the opportunity to visit Newcastle Central Library. It's a very impressive new public library which opened in 2009 - you can read more about it here. I found the library every bit as wonderful in design, facilities and scale as the description suggests.

The major point of interest for me here is the Business & IP Centre, Newcastle - a very innovative collaborative project between the public library, local university libraries and the British Library. There's more information on the project here. It seems to be quite a significant attempt to deliver focused business support resources using a cross-sectoral approach. In particular, it may address some of the issues raised in the report:
British Library (2009). Business Information Resources: Landscape & Feasibility Study [Online]. London: British Library. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/bce/stream4resfinalreport.pdf

Although social enterprise is in some ways very different to other types of business - or to voluntary sector organisations - the issues about how libraries can support all these types of organisations can be quite similar. There are also similarities to questions about how libraries can support independent researchers - people working on research projects but who don't happen to belong to any academic libraries or to have easy access to a research library or a national library.

The mixture of resources (print and electronic), events, training sessions and one to one support sessions with advisors offered by the Business and IP Centre, Newcastle, mirror the approach taken by the British Library's Business & IP Centre in London (which you can find information about here). At a time when regional support for small and medium enterprises is being significantly reduced (Business Link advice centres closed last year, and funding for other smaller support organisations seems increasingly scarce) there does seem to be a real opportunity for libraries to provide vital information and support to these types of organisations - especially if they can work across sectoral divides. That's not to deny the very significant barriers in the way of such initatives, such as declining library funding and license conditions which prevent libraries from opening access up to electronic resources for business. But the Newcastle initiative seems to me to offer a really exciting example of what libraries could do - I hope it is successful!

British Library-University of Sheffield social enterprise project background

I've recently been given ethics approval to begin my research (including interviews and catalogue searching). This means that I hope to post more details of the methodology for each of the proposed strands of my research soon.

In the meantime, I also wanted to mention a new webpage on the University of Sheffield Enterprise website which provides a bit of background detail about the British Library's collaborative projects with the University of Sheffield relating to social enterprise.

This provides a particularly useful account of the impressive work undertaken by my predecessor last year as part of a six-month British Library internship - this work provided the basis for the current PhD project. The page also includes links to the British Library resource guides for social enterprise.

PG Cafe Forum

I recently gave a 15 minute presentation about my research to the university's Postgraduate Cafe Forum. These sessions provide an opportunity to meet and discuss with fellow research students from a wide range of different subject areas, so the first part of the presentation aimed to provide a brief overview of the field of information studies and librarianship.

I discussed some aspects of the modern library collection, moving beyond print to digital materials - ejournals and ebooks - and to new types of content, such as research data and online teaching resources. I also introduced the concept of social enterprise, describing how this has developed in the UK since 1997, and why social enterprise makes a particularly interesting area of study in relation to library collections.

Finally, I discussed my three proposed research methods for my project. These proposed methods need to be reviewed by the Information School's ethics board, so they may well change following any recommendations made by the board. However, at the moment I'm hoping:

• to conduct a case study of British Library collections for social enterprise;


• to carry out catalogue searches for social enterprise material on publicly-accessible catalogues for a range of different types of library;


• to carry out interviews with a small sample of people involved in using, creating or maintaining library collections for social enterprise - for example, social enterprise practitioners, academics and researchers, and librarians. This would be followed by a survey of a larger sample of stakeholders, to see if any of these findings can be generalised to the wider population.

Overall, I think the presentation went well - and although my concerns about my reliance on a script still apply, in this case using PowerPoint slides provided an alternative focus for my attention!

Social enterprise and library collections

A comment on an earlier post asked an important question about how I'm connecting social enterprise with library collections. It's a central issue for the project and I hope this post will help to provide an answer.

I think the connection between social enterprise and collections exists on two levels. Firstly, the overall ambition for this project is to draw conclusions about library collections generally, developing a concept of what the library collection is in the digital world. Hopefully, looking specifically at collections for social enterprise will provide a wide-angle lens for identifying and exploring more general issues. Later in this post, I'll go into a bit more detail about why social enterprise seems to be useful field to study, and the ways in which it can be seen as reflecting some of the issues affecting modern library collections.

Secondly, I hope there will be a practical connection: helping to suggest how those involved with social enterprise can benefit from library collections, and helping to explore how libraries can optimise their collections to meet the needs of these potential customers. I should say that this practical connection isn't an explicit research objective - but I do hope that it suggests the possible practical value which this research could have, both for the field of social enterprise and for the library and information profession.

When considering how library collections for social enterprise may reflect issues for modern library collections more generally, I have found it helpful to think about the following aspects of the field:

• Social enterprise has a wide range of stakeholders - people who may be interested in information about the field potentially include social enterprise customers, students, and people working in the public or private sectors, as well as social enterprise practitioners, people thinking about starting up a social enterprise, policy makers, and academics and researchers in the field.


• The social enterprise community seems highly networked - there is a lot of information available on social media and networking websites, or located through personal networks: how do libraries find out about, and meet, the needs of communities which connect online or through networks?


• Social enterprise is an interdisciplinary field - there may be some general business information which is relevant to social enterprise, but the purpose of a social enterprise is crucial, and may involve finding out about specific topics in any of a range of different areas (health and social care, education, social exclusion etc).


• Social enterprise information may be found in a range of different types of library - information may be found in the collections of a range of libraries - such as health, government, business or voluntary sector libraries, or the libraries of professional associations - as well public, academic and national libraries. This means that the project can try to provide a genuinely cross-sectoral view of issues in library collections.


• Types of information for social enterprise - the types of information which may be most useful - such as information available from social networking websites or blogs - may not be the types of information traditionally found in a library collection.

There are more issues to explore here (I'm sure I'll return to this topic again), but I hope this helps to begin to answer the question posed earlier - any comments about this would be very welcome...

Sheffield iSchool researchers informal discussion session

Yesterday I gave a very brief informal presentation about my research as one of the speakers at a Sheffield iSchool researchers informal discussion session. You can read a summary of what I said in a post on the Sheffield iSchool researchers' blog. This covers some of the ideas emerging from my reading of the literature so far and some initial ideas about possible research methods. I wonder whether this might help to clarify how the collections and social enterprise elements of my research fit together; I'd welcome any comments about the ideas I discussed.

Although this was a very informal session, with a pleasantly relaxed atmosphere, I did feel slightly apprehensive about speaking about the project to a small group of colleagues and fellow researchers for the first time. In these situations, I tend to feel either very overprepared (as yesterday, reading from a script) or underprepared; although I do feel that with a little work what I said could form the basis of my elusive "coffee break pitch". The talk was followed by questions and discussion, providing useful feedback.

Reflections

I've been thinking about the two events I attended last week in a bit more detail. One interesting thing which both brought home to me was that my research is definitely a project of two halves - librarians are interested in the collections aspect and social enterprise practitioners are enthusiastic about their field; being equally interested in both is my role. I think I need to take this into account as I work on a coffee break pitch for my project (I would say "elevator pitch" but being trapped in a confined space with me talking about my research isn't really something I'd wish on anyone...).

There's a related issue here, which is that in both social enterprise and specialist services related to data curation, professionals need to be able to speak different languages to different stakeholders. In data management, this may range from training students to engaging in very technical conversations about relevant systems; for social enterprises, this involves talking with customers, funders, the public and private sectors and with other social enterprises.

It's an important skill in other areas of librarianship, too - seeing it done well at an enquiry desk is very impressive - but perhaps sometimes our systems don't facilitate this as well as they could. For example, many libraries call interlending and document supply "interlibrary loans" (for historical reasons, or perhaps because this is what library management systems call the modules we use to administer the process) - even when most requests are satisfied with photocopies / electronic copies which the customer can keep. I'd be interested to know what you think about these issues of "different languages" in librarianship - or any examples.

Footsey

I've just returned from a trip to Footsey, a social enterprise trade fair which took place at Doncaster racecourse. I've written briefly about what social enterprises are in a previous post, but I have to admit that abstract definitions and my initial reading on the topic hadn't really prepared me for the variety and breadth of social enterprise activity represented at today's event (and most were just from the Yorkshire and Humberside region). Stalls included social enterprises, funding and investment organisations and networking and support groups. Most of the people I spoke to seemed genuinely interested in my research, with a range of opinions about the significance of libraries in providing information for social enterprise.

I also attended a question and answer session and a couple of workshops (one by Doncaster West Development Trust about social enterprises and public sector contracts and another about a soon to be launched social enterprise emerging from an NHS organisation). Key themes emerging from these sessions included:

• The challenge of securing investment in the current climate, with the loss of revenue streams affected by public sector cuts - the recent Growing the social investment market document was mentioned, outlining government thinking about opportunities for new forms of social investment;


• The range of opinions (positive and negative) about the potential impact of government policies - such as the bills currently before Parliament about localism and the reorganisation of the NHS - on social enterprise;


• The importance of networks - between social enterprises, but also as widely as possible with other organisations, such as local authorities, health and social care organisations and the private sector;


• The challenge of providing staff learning and development opportunities within social enterprises - for example, in order to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to compete effectively for contracts.

Just like Umbrella, I've managed to come away with far too many leaflets and other bits of ephemera - it may take me a while to read them all...

The research topic

First of all, a few words about my research topic: "Conceptualising the library collection for the digital world: a case study of social enterprise". I'll go into this in much more detail over the coming weeks (months, years...) but essentially the project involves looking at how the library collection is changing, using the example of collections for social enterprise to explore current issues in collection development, management and exploitation. I also hope that it will provide an opportunity to explore perceptions of "the collection", from the perspectives of customers, librarians and other stakeholders. Is this (still) a meaningful term for all or part of the information resources a library offers its users?

The project will also involve getting to grips with the theory and practice of social enterprise - a new field for me, but very fascinating. There are a number of different approaches to defining social enterprise (definitely a potential topic for another post or several) but for present purposes I'll be using the definition provided by the Department of Trade and Industry (2002) Social enterprise: a strategy for success:

"A social enterprise is a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners."

According to this definition, a social enterprise operates as a business serving a social purpose. Other definitions place varying degrees of emphasis on the different elements alluded to here - for example, there is a hint here that the ownership structure of a social enterprise might be different to that of other business types; other definitions may place a more explicit emphasis on this difference, focussing, for example, on the role of democratic decision-making within a distributed ownership structure.

Another useful introduction to the social enterprise field, from the practitioners' perspective, is available from the Social Enterprise Coalition website.