2 Survey Results: Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Introduction
Entrepreneurship has long been a part of higher education curriculums, particularly within faculties of
management and business. Just as research has become multidisciplinary and data intensive, so too has
the competitive business environment. More recently, the focus has been on expanding entrepreneurship
outside of the business schools and bringing opportunities to students within other faculties. The purpose
of campus entrepreneurship initiatives is to provide faculty and students outside of the traditional
business programs the opportunity to participate in, and collaborate with their colleagues and peers in
the development of new technologies, ideas, and businesses, both inside and outside of the classroom.
This has been, in part, supported by higher education’s growing emphasis on experiential learning
opportunities to enhance engagement and prepare students for the workforce.
Library support for entrepreneurship has typically been provided through business libraries and/
or librarians. The knowledge and expertise these discipline-specific librarians offer faculty and students
can be enhanced and expanded through collaborations with functional specialist librarians in areas such
as data services, GIS, digitization, makerspaces, etc., providing many opportunities for librarians outside
of business schools to become involved with entrepreneurship activities. While many of the current
services offered to faculty and students can be extended to support new experiential learning models,
research libraries may be developing specific services and/or collections to support emerging models of
entrepreneurship on campuses.
In this survey, entrepreneurship opportunities are described as courses, programs, activities,
facilities, funding, and support that provide faculty, staff, and students the opportunity to develop
entrepreneurial knowledge and skills and/or launch new companies or ventures, both inside and outside
of the classroom. Activities can include formal courses and programs, co-curricular or extracurricular
activities such as bootcamps, business plan competitions, or internships. The unique feature of campus-
wide initiatives is that they are not limited to, or reside in a specific faculty, school, or program. Physically,
they may be dispersed around and even off-campus, residing in multiple faculties, departments, or
facilities, including incubators, accelerators, or SmartParks. They may be centrally coordinated by
a separate office of campus entrepreneurship or be a loosely coordinated set of offerings by various
campus stakeholders.
The purpose of this survey was to investigate how ARL member libraries are supporting
campus entrepreneurship, both inside and outside of the classroom. It asked about the types of library
services and resources, funding models, staffing and administrative support, assessment, and the unique
challenges of supporting these programs. These results are based on responses from 60 of the 124 ARL
member libraries (48%) by the deadline of March 31, 2017.
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