ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES:RE-SKILLING,OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE PRACTITIONERS IN SOUTH-SOUTH ZONE OF NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined entrepreneurship development in university libraries:reskilling, opportunities and challenges for LIS practitioners in South-South zone of Nigeria. The work determined the perception of LIS practitioners towards entrepreneurship development and identified the entrepreneurship skills possessed by LIS professionals amongst others. The study adopted the survey research design.Five research questions were postulated and one hypothesis was formulated in this study. The population of the study is 150 respondents drawn from all the government-owned universities in south-south zone of Nigeria. The instrument used for data collection was the questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings from the study indicated that LIS practitioners have a low perception towards entrepreneurship development even though they had the right skills needed for entrepreneurship. Also, it was revealed that there are numerous benefits derived from entrepreneurship as well as challenges facing it. The study also established that no significant relationship existed between demographic variables of library staff and their perception towards entrepreneurship development. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended that university library management should organize sensitization/orientation programmes on entrepreneurship development in order to re-write the perception of library staff towards entrepreneurship.