Effective engagement depends on positive management of a whole range of stakeholders. It is unlikely that simple direct messaging to those you want to engage with will be enough to develop deep engagement with them. Many libraries share a common core of stakeholders – funding body, employees, library users and potential users, and other external bodies, e.g. support groups, suppliers, the media – although each library service has some who are specific to their type of library. Managing the whole range of stakeholders creates an atmosphere and context that can be very supportive of your engagement activities. Many people like to feel they are part of a larger thing.

Within each stakeholder group there are likely to be a number of sub-groups worthy of consideration. For example, public libraries’ funding stakeholders are likely to include local government organisations and organisations that offer grants, while academic libraries’ funding stakeholders are likely to include the university, those who have made bequests and grant awarding bodies. Employee stakeholders are managers, frontline staff and sometimes volunteers.

Most variation is likely to be found in the users and potential users category. Health service libraries have user stakeholders from a wide range of disciplines – clinicians, through nurses to general practitioners and administrative staff. Health services user groups are further complicated by the professions allied to health, which may have different engagement triggers to take account of. Business and corporate libraries have a complex mix of stakeholders from senior management teams to project teams. This complexity of users as stakeholders was considered in Chapter 5.

Three elements of a stakeholder management programme

All non-user stakeholder groups need to be engaged if possible in order to get their funding and organisational support. Essentially there are three key elements within a stakeholder management programme – identification, analysis and communications management – which are discussed below.

Identify stakeholders

When identifying stakeholders of a library who would be suitable to be involved in a stakeholder management programme think about all the people affected by the library's work or who are interested in the success or otherwise of its goals. Brainstorm a list as a starter and circulate it for others to comment on and add to.