Inforpreneurship: Alternative Skills for Sustainable Income for Librarians in South –South, Nigeria

Inforpreneurship: Alternative Skills for Sustainable Income for Librarians in South –South, Nigeria

Ujoumunna, Justice Chinonso¹, Nyemezu, Chidaka Okachukwu², Ogonu, John Gibson³, and Blessing Esuru Ahiauzu⁴

¹Department of History, Archives and Records Management, School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

^2,3,4Department of Library and Information Science, Faculty of Education, Rivers State University, Nigeria

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.807104

Received: 12 June 2024; Revised: 28 June 2024; Accepted: 02 July 2024; Published: 06 August 2024

ABSTRACT

This study is designed to review entrepreneurial skills relevant to librarians and how it could be adopted in librarianship as a means of alternative income to sustain means of livelihood among librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria. The general aim of this study is to introduce the concept of entrepreneurial librarianship, explore the alternative skills and to recommend possible ways to sustain the level of income among librarians of colleges of education.  In order to achieve the objectives of this study, four research hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. A survey method was adopted for the study. Professional librarians in the five selected colleges of education for this study represent the population of the study with the total of 29 respondents. A structured questionnaire titled inforpreneurship: alternative skills for sustainable income for librarians in South-South, Nigeria (IASSILSSN) was administered to the respondents in the five colleges selected for the study accordingly. The study recommends that librarians as well as other information professional need to diversify their interests and passion for entrepreneurial opportunities within and outside library and information work for self-reliance without being dependent on white collar jobs and/ or government to sustain their income. The paper concludes by recommending that, government at all levels and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should provide funds for librarians in any chosen entrepreneurial opportunity available or specialization after graduation from library and information science schools.

Keywords: Inforpreneurship, Librarians, Alternative Skills, Income

INTRODUCTION

This paper is an attempt to modernize the views of Somers (2018) who develops a concept in form of a “model” which best describes the concept, this present study relies on. He calls it “intrapreneurship.” Somers in his scholarship sees the concept: Intrapreneurship, as “acting like an entrepreneur within an established company. It’s creating a new business or venture within an organization. Sometimes that business becomes a new section, or department, or even a subsidiary spinoff”. Therefore, this study tries to explore the alternative skills librarians in South-South, Nigeria could venture into while working in the library to sustain their level of income. It is important to note that other skills such as indexing, abstracting, classifying, cataloguing, and acquisition jobs exist in the entrepreneurial packages a librarian may venture into. However, this study is much deeply concerned on the few alternative skills that can sustain the incomes of librarians outside these noticeable (professional) skills with much relevancy in the field of study.

Inforpreneurship is a concept developed and modernized to explore entrepreneurial opportunities in the information sector and systems. It is the concept that joins information and entrepreneurship together. For information experts, it is usually a concept used to discuss the components of the information discipline that relates to wealth creation, risk development with the aim of exploring skills and individual knowledge to practice librarianship and remains gainfully employed. Can this be allowed in the Library profession? Only if the skills are considered and viewed with the spirit of inforprenuership. Therefore, this paper looks at those alternative skills librarians in colleges of education in South-South and West could do while working in the library to sustain their level of income. These skills are alternative skills which could allow them develop their zeal to work as librarians and yet make more incomes within the library and information science profession.

Statement of the Problem

Librarianship as a profession is a lucrative one. This is because only trained and certified professionals can perform the legal duties of a librarian. Yet, most Library and Information Science graduates seems unemployed after obtaining their degrees and those employed seem not to be adequately enumerated. One therefore wonders what could be the reason. In a preliminary interaction, some librarians believe that there is no practice outside the walls of the library; others believe the job is restricted within the duties assigned to them by the librarian. Could this be the truth? Others believe that entrepreneurial skills are available for both practicing and non-practicing librarians but the training received from library schools are not sufficient. Is this the same from tertiary institutions where educational training is their core objectives? Are there any existing views from librarians in colleges of education? This seems to have created a lot of concerns such as creating unemployment and poverty among librarians. These facts and questions are all different views that are yet to be substantiated and therefore remains speculative. It is against this background that the present study is designed to study librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria to close the gap in entrepreneurial skills available to librarians in this regions as alternative skills to sustainable income.

Objective(s) of the Study

The general Objective of this study is to explore inforpreneurial librarianship as alternative skills to sustain the income of librarians. The specific objectives are:

1. To examine types of entrepreneurial skills librarians in colleges of education possess in South and West regions of Nigeria.
2. To establish what entrepreneurial opportunities are available and preferred to these librarians.
3. To establish what extent do these librarians utilize the entrepreneurial opportunities available to them while working in the library of Colleges of education.
4. To examine what extent do entrepreneurship in librarianship assist librarians in colleges of education in sustaining their level of income in South-South, Nigeria.

Research Questions

1. What are the types of entrepreneurial skills librarians in colleges of education acquire in South-South regions of Nigeria?
2. What entrepreneurial opportunities are available and preferred to these librarians?
3. To what extent do these librarians utilize the entrepreneurial opportunities available to them while working in the library of colleges of education?
4. To what extent do entrepreneurship in librarianship assist librarians in colleges of education in sustaining their level of income in South-South, Nigeria?

Research Hypothesis

The following null hypotheses are formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance:

Ho1. There is no significant difference on educational training of librarians and the types of entrepreneurial skills they have acquired.

Ho2.  There is no significant difference between entrepreneurial opportunities available and preferred skills acquired by librarians.

Ho3.  There is no significant relationship between entrepreneurial opportunities and level of income by librarians.

LITERATURE REVIEW

So many scholars have recently campaigned on the need for entrepreneurship research. According to report, this “has seen tremendous growth and development over the last 4 decades and concomitant recognition as an academic field” in different levels of profession. They maintain that leading entrepreneurship journals receive ever more submissions from ever more countries, and their citation impact factors are on a steady rise while citing the 2021 impact factors, nine entrepreneurship journals are among the top hundred business and management journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) (Thurik, Audretsch, & Block, et al. 2024). We shall conduct a view of different scholarship in this field.

According to an economist Jean-Baptiste Say, the world entrepreneurship originated from ‘entreprendre’ meaning to “undertake” or “adventure” (Entrepreneurship, 2009). Entrepreneurship is the creation of wealth and running of one’s own business at individual risk. It involves using an individual initiative and bringing together the necessary factors of production to provide a product or service for public and private consumptions. Academics developing the process of skills is therefore imperative for sustainability (Nwagu, 2008 and Davey & Galan-Muros, 2023). Again, Mohammed, (2011) sees entrepreneurship as the art and science of systematic application of ingenious methods, processes, strategies, and approaches to initiate, nurture, manage, administer and sustain a system, an enterprise an endeavor, or vocation especially through initialization of the sense and power of thought, curiosity, cleverness, goal orientation, innovation initiation, adoption, imagination, change, transformation, diversification, creativeness, skillfulness, tactfulness, modification, paradigm-shift, venture, risk taking and persuasion.

The concept entrepreneurship is universal. It presumes that all human endeavors require entrepreneurial skills and attributes if such endeavors needed to survive in a world of unlimited resources, succeed and advance in the changing world of poverty and unemployment. It is common to say that one is said to be an entrepreneurial if he/she effectively applies creative ability and other competencies in solving problems around his community or work place. And so not necessarily to produce goods and services. Bringing innovations and competitive skills in one’s profession could be described as entrepreneurial skill. Many of the entrepreneurial skills needed by librarians ought to be successful included in the curriculum for LIS education which will in turn advance them in business and work places. It could be taught in LIS schools through studying and training. Entrepreneurship is taught in the universities in order to prepare graduates entrepreneurially. Entrepreneurial skills as managerial skills, accounting and financial skills, marketing skills, general business skills and information literacy skills if well exploited by librarians, will help them to become successful entrepreneurs in their workplace and business enterprises, it will equally therefore reduce poverty and unemployment among librarians in South-South Nigeria.

South-South Nigeria is a geo-political zone comprising of Akwa Ibom State, Bayelsa State, Cross River State, Delta State, Edo State and Rivers State. It has tertiary institutions like Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of education. For the purpose of this study, the paper is interested in five selected federal and state colleges of education in South-South Nigeria. They are as follows Federal College of Education (Technical), Asaba (Federal); Tai Solarin College of Education, Ijebu-Ode (state); College of Education, Ikere-Ekiti (State); College of Education, Warri (State); Federal College of Education (Technical), Omoku (federal); Federal College of Education, Obodu (federal); Akwa Ibom State College of Education (state).

Alternative skills in librarianship are those opportunities librarians have expertise other than classroom skills which can serve as services to service users with the aim of making extra income. It could also be those professional training that librarians could explore to sustain the profession when they are not unemployed in a public service. It is usually rated with university graduates who are yet to be gainfully employed after successful completion of their degree education in Library and Information Science that the job of a librarian is mostly or usually in the University Library. The term, “alternative skills” is associated with inforpreneurial opportunities available to sustain a library. However, is not limited to only unemployed librarians. This is because when there is high rate of employment in a nation, it is expected that poverty is reduced, yet librarians who are employed seems to also face the same issue of low income. There are laws or conventions enacted to relieve people from suffering of lack of basic needs. With the declaration of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the Nigeria Governments put in place National Economic Empowerment Developments Strategy (NEEDS) as multi-sectorial reforms, N-Power Programme, Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO) and a lot more. NEEDS wishes to make poverty a thing of the past in Nigeria. One of the strategies to be adopted is acquisition of skills for self-employment and self-reliance. Skills are expertness, practical ability, diversity and tack. The skills are to produce librarians who are well prepared to take their place in global society. Therefore, introducing inforpreneurial skills to librarians in colleges of education in South-South could save this purposes of unemployment and low income among librarians. The skills are

Publishing: Publishing is very large is scope and has different aspects. From content development to writing, proof reading to editing, abstracting to indexing, formatting to domi-formatting, cataloguing and classification in print, and publication and distribution stages. Most Libraries do not provide many of such services and librarians in the colleges of education can develop such alternative skills and render such services within their job space.

Information Brokage: Campana (2023) in an attempt to conceptualize information brokage and the jobs they do maintains that “they ensure that data and information are obtained quickly and reliably in a company, and alerts lack of it”. She went further to list and discus their responsibilities as to procure and process data quickly and also to provide data in a bundled and order manner. The skills she listed include but not limited to “keen analytical skills, independent elaboration of research strategies, knowledge of research tools and programmes”. Their job under inforpreneourial librarianship will include as they alert lack of it, they also circulate to specific interest group when provided, especially to those who subscribed for their services for a fee.

Makerspace:  this simply means utilizing the space in the library for business attraction. Emily Badger wrote about how libraries can stay relevant by working with entrepreneurs who are eager to start their own businesses in the Twenty-first century libraries. This aspect of our services can, indeed, play a crucial role in two main ways: space and research assistance. The first way libraries can help small business owners is by offering them space, however, using librarians who knows the limit of library operation may best suit this concept. They may also have the kind of business where they need to acquire a formal space to complete their services but allocating sections for such activities attracts users of the library and increases the income of the librarians. Many people do business anywhere they have Wi-Fi access and a place to sit. Libraries can also offer conference room space that can be reserved for meetings with clients or business partners. What better place to have those necessities than a library where they can also have assistance doing research to better compete in the marketplace? Also providing coffee shops, swimming pools, sitting leisure areas, biding sections, bookshops, and other business centers like photocopying and printing services etc could benefit the librarians.

Digital content creation: librarians while working in the library could also start the skills of creating blogs. This increases reading culture. When such sites provide users with engaging resources, number of subscribers will definitely increase and such makes the librarian’s income sustainable.

From the foregoing, entrepreneurs could be found in all professions as long as they possess any of the entrepreneurial characteristics that could be exhibited such as Librarians, archivist, information scientists, information officers, information managers, like other professions alike; doctors, artist, lawyers, politicians, social workers, education to mention but a few. Expectedly, the entrepreneurship education impacted to librarians in the Nigeria library and information science schools is to produce entrepreneurs in various areas of specialization in library and information science programmes such as an indexer, cataloguer, classifier, archivist, documentarist, system librarian, subject librarian, university librarian, information broker and publishers among others. These are specific entrepreneurial jobs for the profession, Librarianship.

Making the best use of every opportunity in one’s profession is not just been proactive and innovative. Librarianship is one of the disciplines that promotes dynamic innovations into their graduates and trainee librarians. Entrepreneurship in librarianship education is one aspect of the profession that ensures this is actualized. Talking about librarianship, this is a discipline that is concerned with the universe of knowledge, records management, information management, knowledge organization and management including its creation, processing, storage and retrievals, packaging and repackaging at all levels.

Therefore, in the content of this study, entrepreneurship is not just seen as a discipline but also as a programmes in the content of business curricula with its applicability in interdisciplinary context across various academic departments including librarianship (Kuratko, 2005). Attman (2006) provides an insightful conceptualization of entrepreneurship in this regard when he posits that it is a “way of managing jobs which involve the creation of opportunity without regard to the resources currently controlled”.

Supporting the above views, various studies (Lawal 2009, Mohammed 2003 and Ochogwu 2007) have clearly highlighted the lack of entrepreneurship content in Nigerian Library and Information Science curricula. This means that higher number of the Library and Information Science Students may not adequately have the skills or training from received training in the class. For this reason, many librarians turn to other professional literature for models of entrepreneurship that can be applied to librarianship as part of support to earn living outside the profession. By promoting the social responsible role of librarianship, it is generally agreed that the more common business and financial considerations should not apply; but in essence entrepreneurship is not only about this. It is in views of Drucker (1995), he defines entrepreneurship as innovation – the effort to create purchase, focused change in an enterprises economic or social potential. The Kauffman Foundation (2006) considers entrepreneurship to be an exercise in social responsibility. An idea that libraries and the field of librarianship conceptually embraced.

Describing entrepreneurial librarianship, one can now say that it concerns itself with providing information services and products to meet user needs in dynamic, innovative and creative ways. Collaboration is an essential ingredient in this new concept of entrepreneurial innovation. Entrepreneurial education in librarianship training may now mean, that training that is able to stimulate an entrepreneurial spirit with a view to creating innovation or original thinking in terms of information resource use and development. Mohammed (2011), Shola (2011), Anyawsu and Onah- Ossai (2011), Eba and Richard (2007), and Egwu (2011) remarked that these initiatives were essentially designed to promote entrepreneurial culture that build business confidence, positive attitude, pride in success, support and encouragement of new ideas, social responsibility, providing technological support encouraging inter-firm linkages and promotion of research and development. Nigerian government never loses sight of the tripartite relationship between entrepreneurship, industrialization and economic growth.

Other benefits of entrepreneurial librarianship are that it provides a means, and not only integrate business skills, particularly financial marketing and fund raising, but also to apply them towards a variety of goals from commercial enterprise to social or non-profit initiatives (Chung, 2010). Entrepreneurship in librarianship involves fostering entrepreneurial thinking which is aimed at developing the social, cognitive, career and management skills of librarians. Drucker’s (1995) defines a successful entrepreneur based on behavior, not innate personality. “Successful innovators used both the right and left sides of their brains. They look at figures, to satisfy an opportunity, then they go out and look at potential users to study their expectations, their values and needs”. However, Nnodin (2012), identifies some useful entrepreneurial skills needed by new entrepreneurs. They include taking calculated risks, make shred decision, being optimistic and visionary, passionate, demonstration of confidence, resilience, interpersonal skills, communication and listening skills and ability to understand one’s business. The entrepreneurial skills required in an electronic environment to include professional skills managerial and generic skills.

Also, in the views of Wamer as cited by Eke, Igwesi and Orji (2011), he states that many library and information centres operate enterprises that change fees for information services. According to him, they include newspapers chipping, compilation of directories, create archives and software developed vocabularies, moving bar coding, index, manuals, books and documents, organizing conferences and preparing alert services, publish books and newsletter, retrieve document, search online, write abstracts and computer instruction manuals. All these efforts are geared towards access to information. Hence Librarians play key roles in the dissemination of business information.

Finally, Ugwu and Ezeani (2011) state that there is a corresponding expansion in the market for information professionals following the development of manpower in entrepreneurship innovation in librarianship. It is obviously clear that entrepreneurship education is receiving serious attention and librarians are placing premium on it. This point to the fact that entrepreneurship in librarianship will continue to shape the future careers of librarians which in long run will save them from the trauma associated with unemployment, dependency syndromes, prostitution, and armed robbery among other social problems. If the requisite ICTs facilities, learning apparatus, qualified staff and congenial learning environment are provided in library schools, there is no doubt that the prospects of entrepreneurship in librarianship would be bright and more graduates of library and information science/ technology schools will be self-reliance in nature. Entrepreneurial librarianship is concept that promotes innovative initiations of librarians to support their livelihood outside the employment description but within the professional practices and services a librarian can offer to the information users.

RESEARCH METHODS

In conducting this research, a Survey Research Design (SRD) was adopted for the study. This is a systematic method of gathering information from individuals (known as respondents) for the purposes of describing the attitudes of the larger population of which the individuals are members and represents (Enaronia, 2005). The SRD methodology was found most appropriate because of the nature of the population, cultural background, attitudes, etc of the respondents who are unique amd has same working interest. The research employs census sampling technique to investigate a total population of 29 librarians drawn from five stated federal and state colleges of education in the South-South states of Nigeria namely Akwa Ibom, Bayeslsa, Crooss River, Delta, Edo as sample because of their relevance to the investigation under study. Only professional librarians in the colleges of education involved were used for the population of the study. See the table below for the breakdown of the population from the Colleges of Education Studied.

DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

This section charts the course on data analysis and discussion of finding.

Data Analysis

The data collected were analyzed in tables and percentages.

Table 1: Distribution of the Population

Structured Questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. Google form was used as a method of distribution. Questionnaire was used due to its convenience and capacity to cover the information gaps likely to create in searching for the relevant information/data for the study. A pilot study was carried out at colleges of education in South-East states geo-political zone of Nigeria. The respondents that participated in the pilot study were 20 respondents. The reliability of the questionnaire was found to be 0.89, which means that the instrument is reliable. T-test was used to test the significant difference between variables in hypothesis 1 and 2 at 0.05 level of significance, while Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to test the significant relationship among the variables in hypothesis 3, 4, and 5 at the 0.05 level of significance with the aid of statistical package for social management science (SPSS) 2.0 version.

Table 1: Types of Inforprenurial Skills

As opined by Davey and Galan-Muros (2023), academics now understands their environment in such a way that they make it more relevant than just doing the ordinary job of teaching. Most researches done are now been used to create sustainable income through innovations. This view is evident on the findings of the current investigation where librarians in this region have understood that outside working in the library, they could venture into publishing, information brokage, makerspace among other activities to sustain their level of income.

Table 2: Types of Inforprenurial opportunities

NS= Not significant

N= Significant

Ugwu and Ezeani (2011) and (Thurik, Audretsch, & Block, et al. 2024) also believe that marketing on profit-oriented ventures has high level of impact on the innovations that participants accept while looking for a way to sustain their level of income. The result of this study on the types of inforprenurial opportunities available to librarians accord with these views. Therefore, a perceived understanding of the environment according to Davey & Galan-Muros (2024) is also encouraged to better explore the marketing opportunities and profit-oriented indices.

Table 3: Extent of utilization of the opportunities and skills

The study from the table above has found that the extent to which librarians utilize these opportunities are inadequate. This could be as a result of the position of the findings of Davey & Galan-Muros (2024) where their study maintains that inability of the stakeholders to form a perceived understanding of these opportunities will lead to grossly inefficiency and low utilization of the available opportunities.

Table 4: Analysis of Variance Statistics on the types of entrepreneurial training acquired by librarians of colleges of education studied.

    *Significant at the 0.05 level (2-tails)

Table 5: Analysis of Variance Statistics on the entrepreneurial opportunities available and preferred Skills by librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria.

*Significant at the 0.05 level (2-tails)

Table 6: Correlation between entrepreneurial opportunities available and level of income by librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria.

*Significant at the 0.05 level (2-tails)

DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

The type of inforpreneurial skills studied in the colleges of education are book publishing, information brokerage and make-space. It shows that publishing and information brokerage were significant as skills they will like to choose as alternative skills. This finding is in accord with the views of Davey & Galan-Muros (2024). Only 29 respondents said that makerspace is an alternative skill. All the respondents significantly agree that available opportunities like marketing, and profit oriented opportunities are accessible to them while none of the respondents were willing to engage in non-profit opportunities. This finding is also in accord with the findings of Ugwu and Ezeani (2011) and (Thurik, Audretsch, & Block, et al. 2024) where they both believe that these items form the opportunities through which entrepreneurs venture into alternative skills.   On the level of frequency, the respondents agree that these opportunities are at low extent. This could be the problem of low income sustainability. 29 of the respondents agree that acquiring inforpreneurial skills helps to make them self-reliance and avails them the opportunity to advance in career.

Hypothesis 1: The null hypothesis stated that “there is no significant difference on educational training of librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria and the types of entrepreneurial skills they have acquired”. This hypothesis is aimed at establishing the types of entrepreneurial skills acquired by librarians of colleges of education under study. In order to test the hypothesis, One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used. The result is presented in Table 4

Table 4 above shown the calculated mean score of between groups of the respondents to be 13.592 for the different entrepreneurial skills acquired by librarians of colleges of education studied. The 12.893 mean score represented the within group i.e. each college of education library. The table revealed that there is significant difference among librarians in the type of entrepreneurial skills they have acquired because the calculated F value of 1.047 is greater than the significant value of .404. This means that the null hypothesis which stated that there is no significant difference on educational training of librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria and the types of entrepreneurial skills they have acquired is rejected. Thus, there is a significant difference among librarians and the types of entrepreneurial skills they acquired and the educational training received. This suggests that they should be change in perception on the nature of skills already known and what could be relevant to sustain their level of income such as publishing and opening other business ventures like information brokerage in the library etc

Hypothesis 5: The null hypothesis stated that “There is no significant difference between entrepreneurial opportunities available and preferred skills acquired by librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria”. The hypothesis is aimed at establishing the significant difference between entrepreneurial opportunities available and prefer skills available by librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria. In order to test the hypothesis, One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used. The result is presented in Table 3

Table 5 above revealed that the calculated mean score of between groups of the respondents to be 25.614 for the different of entrepreneurial opportunities available and preferred skills by librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria. The 25.220 mean score represented the within group i.e each colleges of education library. The table revealed that there is significant difference in the types of entrepreneurial opportunities available and preferred skills by librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria, because the calculated F value of 1.016 is greater than the significant value of .422. This mean that the null hypothesis which stated that there is no significant difference between entrepreneurial opportunities available and preferred skills by librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria is rejected. Thus, there is a significant difference between entrepreneurial opportunities available and preferred skills available by librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria. This implies that suggesting and introducing other alternative skills in the library profession may enlarge the preferences of the librarians to engage in intrapreneurship skills that could increase and sustain their level of income.

Hypothesis 6: The null hypothesis stated that “there is no significant relationship between entrepreneurial opportunities available and sustainable level of income by librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria”. The hypothesis is aimed at establishing the significant relationship that exist between entrepreneurial opportunities available and level of income by librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria. In order to test the hypothesis Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used. The analysis is presented in Table 6

Table 6 has shown that there is significant positive correlation between entrepreneurial opportunities available and unemployment by librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria. The reason for this result is that calculated probability value of .043 is less than the 0.05 (p<0.05) alpha level of significance. Hence, the hypothesis which stated that there is no significant relationship between entrepreneurial opportunities available and level of income in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria is rejected. Therefore, it is appropriate to state that there is significant relationship between entrepreneurial opportunities available and level of income by librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria.

Hypothesis 4: The null hypothesis stated “there is no significant relationship between entrepreneurship and alternative skills among librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria”. The hypothesis is aimed at establishing the relationship that exist between entrepreneurship in librarianship and poverty reduction among librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria. In order to test the hypothesis Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was adopted.

CONCLUSION

The research has been conducted, data collected were analyzed and literature reviewed. It is based on the findings of this study, it is obviously clear that librarians in colleges of education in South-South Nigeria need entrepreneurial skills to survive the rate of poverty and unemployment concerns in the region. However, it could be concluded that entrepreneurship in librarianship is key to advancement in career among practicing and non-practicing librarians since there is significant influence on entrepreneurial skills and level of income. It is therefore expected that librarians in South-South, Nigeria will make the best use of the entrepreneurial skills they have acquired as well as entrepreneurial opportunities available and preferred skills by them to establish small and medium enterprises in line and relevant to their profession so as to reduce the over dependence on government at all levels of employment generation, poverty reduction, social services provision and socio economic development of Nigeria. In summary, the study concludes that;

1. There is significant difference in the types of entrepreneurial course training they acquired.
2. There is a significant difference between entrepreneurial opportunities available and preferred skills available by librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria.
3. There is significant relationship between entrepreneurial opportunities available and level of income by librarians of colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on the findings and conclusion of this study, the following recommendations were made:

1. Library Schools at all levels should improve on the level of awareness of the benefit of entrepreneurial Skills librarians as it relates to poverty alleviation, reducing unemployment and self-reliance.
2. Government should encourage various institutions training library and information professionals in redesign their curriculum in order to capture practical entrepreneurial skills acquisition for self-reliance and job creation within and outside the library profession.
3. Professional bodies like Librarians’ Registration Council of Nigeria (LRCN), Nigeria Library Association of Nigeria (NLA), as well as National Association of Library and Information Science Educators (NALISE) should increase training by organizing periodic seminars, workshops and conferences for librarians and other information professionals in order to keep them abreast of current trends in entrepreneurship in librarianship.
4. Commercial Banks, government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should provide funds for librarians in any chosen entrepreneurial opportunity available or specialization after graduation from library and information science schools.

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