Sunday October 1st, 2017 Community Hubs: Creating a New Blue Ocean

Public Libraries face unparalleled challenges in this time of rapid digital change. Their traditional user base is shrinking and their competitors are getting bigger and stronger. Their use is in long term decline and some people are starting to question their relevance and viability. Community Hubs are a new model of service delivery which give public libraries the potential to remove themselves from a bloody ‘red ocean’ of rivals fighting over peoples culture and leisure time. The rivals are big corporations like Amazon and Google who not only compete for people’s time, but also offer some of the services which public libraries have provided. It is possible, for example, to order almost every book in print and get it delivered to your door the following day by Amazon. Public libraries cannot compete with the collection size or delivery times of Amazon.

And Google searches have made traditional public library reference inquiries almost redundant. But public libraries still make sense in the digital age because their collections include many items that are not in print and available from Amazon; and Google does not provide the quality control of information that public libraries can provide. We can fact check fake news and point people in the direction of reliable information sources. Municipal authorities still invest in public libraries because they are a freely available community service with few financial or other barriers to access. At the same time there is growing pressure to get a better return on this investment by providing a wider range of services in partnership with other organizations. Public libraries have endured for over 150 years but they are no longer unique. All of the services that public libraries provide are also being offered by a widening range of bigger and better competitors. The red ocean is getting more and more bloody.

The private sector has vast resources at its disposal to produce ever more innovative products and public libraries cannot match this level of investment and innovation. Public libraries are starting to lose their Unique Selling Point but have an opportunity to regain this competitive advantage by transforming themselves into Community Hubs. This is classic Blue Ocean strategy: how to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant (Kim & Mauborgne, 2005).
Community Hubs provide a central access point for a range of needed health and social services, along with cultural, recreational, and green spaces to nourish community life. Whether virtual or located in a physical building, whether located in a high-density urban neighbourhood or an isolated rural community, each Community Hub is as unique as the community it serves and is defined by local needs, services and resources. Community Hubs is not a new term or concept and has been around for some time in Canada and elsewhere.

What is new is the focus on the potential of public libraries to become Community Hubs. In Canada, for example, the Ontario Provincial Government has highlighted public libraries as an ideal location for developing Community Hubs. The physical infrastructure already exists in most communities and there is a natural alignment between the purpose, values and vision of public libraries and the Community Hub concept.  When people think of Community Hubs, they think of places where people come together to get services, meet one another and plan together. Community hubs are gathering places that help communities live, build and grow together. No Community Hub is like another, as each brings together a variety of different services, programs and/or social and cultural activities to reflect local community needs.

By becoming Community Hubs Thunder Bay Public Library can apply the Blue Ocean strategy of creating uncontested market space that is ripe for growth. We can retain existing patrons and attract new and different service users. When public libraries transform into Community Hubs they can become not only the biggest fish in the pond, but the only fish. This strategic shift – termed value innovation – will create powerful leaps in value both for the public library and its patrons, rendering rivals obsolete and unleashing new demand.

John Pateman