Small Business Saturday is November 26. Libraries can support entrepreneurs in a variety of ways (Schadt, 2016) .  Indeed small business owners have a variety of information needs.

Librarians can support businesses’ information needs by learning more about them.  Laura Metzler, Small Business Information Librarian for Cecil County Public Library (Maryland), notes, “It’s research; it’s just like working at the reference desk, just all the questions are business related” (as cited in Schadt, 2016, para. 5).

Though I would not make recommendations beyond my expertise, I would build my knowledge to support our leadership and business students.  In other words we support others’ information literacy by building our own.

Information literacy concerns not a single context, but an “information ecosystem” (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2015, Introduction section, para. 1).  Business and business education are part of that ecosystem, too.  Let’s support our local small businesses on November 26.

Reference

Association of College & Research Libraries. (2015).  Framework for information literacy for higher education.

Retrieved from ACRL website : http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework

 Schadt, E. M. (2016, September 19). Four ways to reach entrepreneurs in your community [Blog post].

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