The British Library: An excellent business support centre

Libraries are not often associated with commercial dynamism and business savvy, but the past 12 months has seen the grandmother of all libraries, the British Library, transform itself into one of the fastest growing business support centres in the country.

The cause of the library's new-found popularity with the nation's entrepreneurs is its innovative Business & Intellectual Property Centre. Set over two floors at the main St Pancras site, the centre aims to be a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs and small business owners, bringing together unparalleled business and intellectual property information.

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It started out as a temporary experiment in 2004, after Isabel Oswell, the library's head of business marketing, returned from a trip to New York's Science and Industry Business Library, determined to create something similar in the UK.

She realised that the British Library's vast resources gave it a unique opportunity to become the UK's premier information source for entrepreneurs. Its resources include arguably the largest collection of market research reports in the world, free access to a huge array of subscription-only business databases and publications, plus the library's collection of over 57 million patents (the library is home to the UK Intellectual Property Office, formerly the Patent Office).

"The aim is to provide entrepreneurs and business owners with all they need to take them from that first spark of inspiration, through the research and the planning, to launching and growing the business. The centre is unique in that we hold intellectual property and also business information under one roof," says Oswell.

The pilot was such a success that in May 2005 the London Development Agency, the Mayor of London's agency for business and jobs, announced a £1m funding package to turn the project into a permanent resource.

The centre's facilities were enlarged and upgraded to include state-of-the-art meeting rooms, a networking area and wireless internet access. A team of information experts is on hand to help people find the information they need. The new centre re-launched in March 2006. In the 14 months since, it has welcomed more than 25,000 people through its doors.

But the centre is more than a source of static business information. It organises workshops, networking events and seminars with a range of partners, on a range of topics from franchising to writing a business plan.

It also runs a highly successful series of "Inspiring Entrepreneurs" events, where entrepreneurs such as Anita Roddick of The Body Shop and Stelios Haji-Ioannou of the easy Group talk about their experiences. So far, says Oswell, every one of the six or seven events it organises each year has sold out.

"We run either a single entrepreneur or a panel of entrepreneurs all from a similar area, talking about the challenges they faced and how they made it. We want to inspire people to use the centre's resources to pursue their own business ideas and to enable them to network with both our own experts and with other entrepreneurs," she says.

It is a laudable aim and one which has already had some notable successes, such as Adam Pritchard, founder of RJA Foods. Pritchard hit upon the idea of developing a pomegranate juice drink while travelling in Asia. To make sure the rest of the world shared his enthusiasm for the idea, not to mention how to actually make juice from pomegranates, Pritchard used the centre to research the market and the production process.

"Adam virtually camped out in the library for about six months researching his idea," recalls Oswell.

"I had no background in food and drink," says Pritchard, "so I researched the fruit and its health properties and how it might be processed, then learned more about the juice market in the UK."

Using the library for this research clearly paid off. His juice, Pomegreat, is now sold in all major supermarkets and RJA Foods has an annual turnover of £5m.

Providing such a comprehensive service for free, or at least heavily subsidised, doesn't come cheap, though. The LDA grant covers two years, with the possibility of another two- year package after that. But ultimately, Oswell says that the centre has to become self-funding if it is to have a secure long term future.

"Private funding enables us to maintain the level of service we provide. We attracted £1.9m in sponsorship in 2006/07, but we always need more. The Business & IP Centre is like a new baby. With a bit of support it'll soon be able to walk on its own."