Toward core competencies for entrepreneurship librarians

Abstract

This paper shares the results of a survey of North American academic librarians engaged with campus entrepreneurship to identify unique job responsibilities and tasks, the skills and experience they employ to carry out this work, and the impact that campus context has on librarian engagement with this community. A contextual approach draws on a variety of sources to first identify competencies which were adapted and then ranked. Research services and engagement; market research; innovation and problem solving, relationship building, and critical thinking are identified as key competencies. Participant demographics and work experience as well as institutional engagement were also considered. File 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 TOWARD CORE COMPETENCIES 5 This area of librarianship reflects some of the ways in which our profession is changing as a whole. An earlier Kauffman Foundation report, Entrepreneurship in American Higher Education (2008), outlined the various forms that institutional activity can take, starting with the discrete, general/foundational courses, either optional or mandatory, that "brings entrepreneurship into the mainstream of students' discourse about their own education and helps them apply it when they turn to more specialized study" (p. 10). Undergraduate and graduate offerings range from the "discrete course [to] the disciplinary program, the major or concentration" (p. 11). Meanwhile, co-curricular offerings such as incubators and accelerators as well as workshops and events are described as a natural fit for campus entrepreneurship, which "cannot be limited to the classroom. Students interested in it and committed to it will want the opportunity to try it out, to actually do it" (p. 13). This echoes the trend toward experiential learning that is currently reaching across disciplines; Kauffman (2013) describes the range of available courses as "staggering" (p. 9). Outside curriculum, administrative entrepreneurial practices can include incorporation into the tenure process, translational research, technology transfer offices and entrepreneurship centers, work spaces, industry partnerships, and an executive priority/mandate in a strategic plan or other document. Not explicitly stated in the report but inferred from the examples of innovative programs at selected post-secondary institutions is the impact of community; proximity to accelerators, workspaces, technology clusters, innovation parks, and hubs such as Silicon Valley can also influence campus activity. Manuscript -Anonymous akaIn response to this growth, we have seen a co...

Impact of library information literacy training on entrepreneurship competition scores: A quantitative study at University of California, Irvine

“…The recent surge in entrepreneurship activity at higher education institutions across the country has produced a community with unique information needs, which has directly impacted academic libraries. As Toane and Figueiredo (2018) explain, "campus entrepreneurs seek information to inform their ideas, validate their assumptions, and reduce their risk" (p. 36). Entrepreneurial research can include broad categories such as industry, market, company, funding, and intellectual property research, which are often challenging to navigate and may require expensive subscription databases and other resources.…”

Embedding Librarians in Engineering Programs: Three Case Studies With Engineering Students

“…In 2014, the Waterloo Library established a new liaison librarian portfolio for Entrepreneurship. "Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing areas on academic campuses in Canada and the United States" [11] and the development of an Entrepreneurship Librarian role at the University of Waterloo follows a trend to support this growing specialization in academia. The Entrepreneurship Librarian provides support for both curricular and cocurricular entrepreneurship programs [12]; however, the most engaged stakeholders come from the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business (Conrad) which is housed in the Faculty of Engineering.…”

Entrepreneurial opportunities: A roadmap for diversifying financial sources in libraries, Tanzania

“…However, such activities form a strong baseline for venturing entrepreneurship because they can be transformed into entrepreneurship opportunities. Toane and Figueiredo (2018) state that entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing areas on academic campuses. There is also evidence that libraries in different parts of the world are investing in incomegenerating projects that transform conventional fee-based service into entrepreneurship ventures (Mapulanga, 2012), an example being the libraries of Johns Hopkins University.…”

“…However, to effectively venture into entrepreneurship projects, a proper combination of competencies and other important attributes must be ensured. Based on the reviewed literature, competencies and attributes needed in library entrepreneurship vary (Farkas, 2012;Idowu and Musbaudeen, 2018;Rippa and Secundo, 2018;Toane and Figueiredo, 2018;Vecchione, 2018). For example, Kirk (2005) discloses that highly proactive attitudes and actions rooted in willingness of a number of individuals to participate in joint efforts are important.…”

“…This clearly indicates that positive attitudes and action are important for libraries that intend to venture into entrepreneurship. Literature further shows that research management, outreach, marketing, innovation, and problem solving are key entrepreneurship competencies needed by libraries (Toane and Figueiredo, 2018). Regarding research management, some scholars (e.g.…”