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The space requirement for any commercial partner, whether it’s a bank or any other organisation, needs to be carefully negotiated because we always have to go back to our first principle of our public service ethos...
Exploring relationships between public libraries and commercial organisations
Partnerships with high street banks is just one of the ways Hertfordshire public library service raises income to sup- port delivery of the core service. Here Russel Barrow, Principal Librarian, Operations: West, explains how it works and how it fits into a wider commercial strategy.
ERTFORDSHIRE’S first brush with pop- up banking was in 2018 when NatWest closed in Harpenden.
“That was our first venture into working in partnership with a bank to enable delivery of pop-up banking,” says Russel, “and it ran successfully for a year.
But it’s only since coming out of Covid that pop-up banking in libraries has really gathered momentum.” That momentum is not only in the number of banks now involved and the income being generated, but also in the evolution of a commercial strategy. Russel says the original direction of the strategy was set by Hertfordshire’s Inspiring Libraries: My Place 2022- 2032 strategy that “is about how we develop and deliver our services over 10 years, including how we will diversify our approach to generating additional income to reinvest in our services. Being open to working with commercial partners like the banking sector is part of that approach.”
Training
A key factor that has helped bring commerce into focus has been training: “Support from Libraries Connected has been very influential in helping us to develop our commercial mindset” Russell says, “in particular the Libraries Connected Future Funding Commercial Skills training programme. I did this as
part of Cohort 2 in 2021/22. That gave us the dedicated training space in which to think about commercial strategies, our products and services, risk manage- ment, partnerships with the commercial sector, and service solutions. And what that did was to challenge our approach and get us thinking in different ways about income. It has helped us to take a pro active approach to diversifying our sources of income so that we are devel- oping a commercial mindset without sacrificing our values and our public service ethos.”
Bigger picture
Russel says this “has given us a broader and longer term view,” adding that “the training programme has not only helped us develop our thinking around work- ing with companies like the banks, or delivering commissioned services like the visa service we provide in partner- ship with Libraries Connected and the government’s lead provider, but also to consider when income streams come to the end of their life and how to replace them. It also takes into account how we might approach grant income for par- ticular projects.”
Banking on relationships
This new mindset keeps the daily hands-on task fixed into a longer-term view. Russel says: “The lesson that I’ve learned and would pass on is about the importance of considering all the aspects that might impinge on the relationship manage-
Russel Barrow.
ment with the commercial partner. Don’t underestimate the importance of actively managing the relationship because a good relationship can lead to further opportu- nities that can benefit the service and the community. Ultimately we want to be a partner that other organisations can and want to do business with.”
He says this can be in the daily detail: “Sometimes it can be the small, seemingly insignificant things that might undermine a relationship and it’s important not to forget those details when planning the relationship with the potential partner. For example, how will we use each other’s logos to promote our respective services; how will the commercial partner’s service representatives work with the local library
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