Academic entrepreneurship: The HBS library takes a lesson from the school it serves

by Doris Small Helfer Chair, Technical Services and Science Librarian Library California State University, Northridge In 1998, Tom Michalak, executive director of the Baker Library at the Harvard Business School (HBS), received a call from an HBS alumni inquiring as to whether online access to the school's very extensive resources was available to help him on a management project he needed to research. Typically, online contracts that universities have with the online database suppliers do not allow alumni remote access to any databases. Universities typically are contractually required to limit access to current faculty, staff, students, and those who may walk into the library. Remote database users usually must authenticate themselves through some sort of proxy server as valid and current members of the university community for academic institutions to abide by their contractual license obligations. Harvard's Business School library was no different. But to Tom Michalak, "In an age when information should be more immediate and accessible then ever before, that didn't make any sense." To determine if other alumni of the school would also appreciate remote access to the school's databases, the Baker Library surveyed alumni and did focus groups. The results showed an overwhelming interest in having access to a Web site with timely business material, alumni information, and access to those proprietary databases familiar to increasing numbers of alumni from their tenure as students. Alumni missed having access to the research once they left the Business School. Survey results also showed that alumni had very different needs from the MBA students. Alumni expressed a need for filtered and distilled information, delivered in brief, timely, and concise capsules. This insight led to the development of a beta site named The Management Center, which was offered to a test group of 250 graduates. After reviewing the beta site and feedback from alumni users, the Harvard Business School dean, Kim B. Clark, suggested broadening the prototype and developing a more extensive Web site, which became the HBS Working Knowledge Web site [http://hbswork ingknowledge.hbs.edul]. As the site developed in the summer of 1999, the objective expanded to building a resource useful to the entire HBS community and the general public by reflecting the full breadth and depth of the school's intellectual output. HBS Working Knowledge launched in October 1999 by sending more than 24,000 e-mail announcements to alumni, encouraging them to register for the Web site and to subscribe to the Baker Library Research Center. In early December 1999, the site was made accessible to the Harvard community, the general public, and the