Northeastern University has an Entrepreneurship Librarian
Khyle Hannan has held the position since he joined Northeastern in 2018.
Universities have long had librarians dedicated to helping students in business school and in specific subject areas. But entrepreneurship librarians are a relatively new thing in academia.
“We were one of the first libraries in the country, if not the world, to have a position called Entrepreneurship Librarian,” says Evan Simpson, Associate Dean for Experiential Learning and Academic Engagement at Northeastern University in Boston.
Such a position is ideal for the institution with the university’s focus on real-world experiential learning, its interdisciplinary focus, its established entrepreneurship programs and groups on campus, and the expertise and inspiration that faculty and students bring to the D’Amore-McKim School of Business.
But turning an idea into a successful business requires a lot of information. Especially in today’s world.
“This is the most complex information environment ever,” says Khyle Hannan, the university’s Entrepreneurship Librarian who created the role when he joined Northeastern in 2018. “Every year there is more information, and that makes the right information harder to find.”
Students often need help finding research on the market in which they are interested, doing research on competitors to their potential business, answering questions about how customers are currently fulfilling a need their business hopes to address and how their business can improve on this, and answering many other questions likely to be posed as they develop their ideas, Hannan says.
“I think Northeastern is the most entrepreneurial university on the planet, and it is entrepreneurial in so many ways,” says Daniel Cohen, Dean of the library, Vice Provost for Information Collaboration, and Professor of History at Northeastern.
Click here to learn more about the still novel position.
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