Business Librarians and Entrepreneurship: Innovation Trends and Characteristics

Abstract

This exploratory study combines quantitative and qualitative data on the innovative characteristics of business librarians and the organizational culture of their libraries. Because of the perceived connection between innovation and entrepreneurship, we surveyed business librarians from ten United States universities with top entrepreneurship programs. To gauge the innovative characteristics of organizational culture, we conducted interviews with managers from some of those libraries. Our results suggest that our survey population skews heavily toward the innovative side of Everett Rogers' innovation adopter categories. This raises the questions about the necessity of late-adopters for innovations to completely diffuse through a particular population. We conclude that while innovation is essential to these librarians and their managers, it must be clearly defined and openly supported by library administration.