Fundamental changes in higher education, information technology and scholarly 
communication are provoking a radical revisioning of the future academic library.1  The 
library must pursue strategic thinking and action, fiscal agility, and creative approaches to the 
development of collections and services, and to the expansion of markets.  Higher education 
libraries are advancing away from the traditional or industrial age library, a model which is no 
longer viable.  The combined impact of digital and network technologies, the globalization of 
education and scholarship, and increased competition for resources will produce a very 
different library in the academy over the next decade. *  

    Academic libraries have behaved fundamentally as anticipatory libraries, selecting and 
acquiring information resources on a global scale in largely print/analog formats that respond 
to the current, and anticipate the future needs of faculty and students.  These materials are 
organized, stored and preserved for dependable access.  Library staff provide dissemination, 
interpretation and instructional  services to enable effective use.

    In the transitional or responsive academic library, the processes of information 
acquisition, synthesis, navigation and archiving are increasingly focused on networked and 
interactive access to digital multimedia information at point of need, and on the innovative 
application of electronic technologies.  Academic libraries are now implementing this model, 
serving as both providers of global publications and portals for users to resources that are 
increasingly created, stored and delivered online.  The library is both a historical archive and a 
learning and research collaboratory.

    The future academic library will carry forward these network and digital revolutions 
and also integrate a more market-based, customized and entrepreneurial approach to the 
packaging and delivery of information.  Academic libraries will become centers for research 
and development in the application of technology to information creation and use; aggregators 
and publishers, and not just consumers of scholarly information; campus hubs for working 
with faculty on the integration of technology and electronic resources into teaching and 
research; regional and national centers for lifelong learning opportunities for information 
professionals; and providers of information services to broader academic, research and 
business communities.  This vision for the academic library predicts a significant moderation 
in the cost increases for knowledge acquisition and access as new models of scholarly 
publishing are successfully launched; massive expansion and diversification in new learning 
communities; a redefinition of the library as a virtual resource not limited by time and space 
and so dependent on buildings for the housing, use and servicing of information; and a 
repositioning of the academic library as a successful competitor in the information 
marketplace for new business and for corporate, foundation and federal investment. 

    My objectives in this paper are: to acknowledge the revolutionary environment in 
which academic libraries are developing, to outline the nature of entrepreneurship and 
innovation and their relevance to library advancement, to discuss the impact of changes in 
global learning and scholarly communication on library entrepreneurial opportunities, to 
relate recent experiences in the Libraries at Johns Hopkins University as a case study in 
entrepreneurial activity, and to define several key elements for successful entrepreneurial 
development in the academic library. 

The Changing Academic Library

    David Close, in his book Revolution: A History of the Idea,  argues that "the essential 
feel of revolution derives from its cataclysmic quality…it destroys people's security and 
unsettles their convictions."2 Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 
observes that "the transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new 
tradition can emerge is far from a cumulative process."3  Karl Marx, in his theory of 
knowledge, or epistemology, emphasizes that ideas do not exist on their own, but are real and 
have value only when they are translated into action.  He points to a pot of water over a flame.  
We know intellectually that the temperature of the water is rising, but only when it reaches a 
critical point, the boiling point, when the liquid changes to gas, does a true transformation 
take place.  It is this move from quantitative to qualitative change that Marx defined as 
revolution.  In many ways, today's academic library is a paradigm in crisis, unsettled, insecure 
and beginning to bubble.

    Revolutionary changes are transforming the environment in which the academy and 
the library operate.4 These include significant developments in the technological, social, 
economic and service milieu. *  Particularly noteworthy are an "information as commodity 
revolution" which is increasingly viewing information as an article of commerce and source 
of profit rather than property held in common for societal benefit, and a "mutability 
revolution" which is elevating change and survival into organizational constants and 
encouraging hybrids or mutations in structures, programs and roles.  Technology used for 
replication and acceleration – doing things as they have always been done but much faster – is  
being supplanted by technology for innovation – doing things that have never been done 
before.  Students and researchers are bringing extraordinary expectations to technology: more 
and better content, access and convenience; new capabilities; reductions in cost; and 
expansion in individual and organizational productivity.

    It is important for academic libraries to understand and capitalize on the important 
advantages of the digital medium.5  These include: 

 *  Accessibility:  the ability to overcome the limitations of place; 
 *  Availability:  the ability to overcome the limitations of time; 
 *  Searchability:  is the ability to probe information in new ways; 
 *  Currency:  the ability to make information available in a more timely way online; 
 *  Researchability:  the ability to ask new questions that could not be posed with printed
                      information; 
 *  Dynamism:  the fluidity of the presentation and the ability to reshape the information;
 *  Interdisciplinarity:  the ability to carry out research across multiple fields and to 
                          explore new approaches to a topic.  

Other noteworthy qualities include: 

 *  collaborative nature:  the ability to incorporate conversation and debate among 
                           scholars and students into the use of a work; 
 *  multimedia aspects:  the ability to integrate text, images, sound and video into the 
                         presentation; 
 *  linkability:  the ability to use hypertext to connect a work to related materials;
 *  interactivity:  the ability of the user to not only read and view the information, but 
                    also to interact with the digital text and images and to use and repurpose 
                    them in creative ways; 
 *  procedural qualities:  the ability of the computer to carry out tasks over and over again 
                           with high accuracy and efficiency, thus allowing the user to focus 
                           on the intellectual work; 
 *  spatial capabilities:  the ability to view objects in multiple dimensions and 
                           relationships, and the ability to navigate easily through files of 
                           information; and 
 *  encyclopedic qualities:  the almost unlimited capacity of the computer to store and 
                             display massive volumes of information without the limitations of 
                             the physical format. 

Each of these characteristics presents an opportunity for innovation and advancement in 
library functionality and capability.  

    At the conceptual core of these developments is the digital library, defined by the 
Digital Library Federation during its period of formation as "organizations that provide the 
resources, including the specialized staff to select, organize, provide intellectual access to, 
interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of 
collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a 
defined community or set of communities." At the operational level, the institutional digital 
library program includes several core elements, including scholarly content, instructional 
support, technology development, access design, and research and evaluation.  It embraces a 
number of key capabilities,  including  a Web-based library management system; the purchase 
or licensing of textual and multimedia databases; electronic publishing through the conversion 
of analog materials to digital formats; electronic course reserves; the collection and archiving 
of software, courseware, simulations and research data files; the identification and 
organization of Internet sites of quality and relevance; electronic document delivery; 
customized literature update services; and online instructional tutorials to support effective 
use of digital  resources. *  Each of these components embraces creative collection and service 
development and the potential for entrepreneurial outreach to and beyond the academic 
community.  Advancing the digital library means leveraging the content, reshaping the 
organizational culture, building the physical and expertise infrastructure, setting the direction, 
and then just doing it. 



The Entrepreneurial Imperative

    The word "entrepreneur" was first applied in France to individuals who "entered 
(entre) and took charge (preneur)" of royal contracts.  The king would grant a noble the right 
to build a road or a bridge, for example, and to collect the tolls in return for a gift or a favor.  
The noble would in turn appoint an individual, the entrepreneur, who would arrange the 
financing, supervise construction, and manage the completed facility.  The entrepreneur 
guaranteed the noble a fixed income, and kept any proceeds left over in compensation for his 
service and his risk.  Howard Stevenson of Harvard defines entrepreneurship as a 
management style that involves pursuing opportunity without regard to the resources currently 
controlled.6  Economist Joseph Schumpeter, writing in 1911, brought the concept of 
innovation to the definition of entrepreneurship, including process, market, product, factor, 
and organizational innovation.  His work emphasized the role of the entrepreneur in creating 
and responding to economic discontinuities and as "a person who carries out new 
combinations."7

    Organizations and individuals can be viewed as sitting on an entrepreneurial 
continuum, at one extreme the "promoter" who feels confident of the ability to seize 
opportunity regardless of the resources under current control, and at the other extreme is the 
"trustee" who emphasizes the efficient utilization of current resources.  Stevenson has 
identified a series of factors that pull individuals and organizations towards particular types of 
entrepreneurial behavior.8  

The first factor is strategic orientation, or how strategy is formulated; on the basis of 
opportunity or on the basis of resources in hand"  It is important to note that the entrepreneur 
is not always focused on breaking new ground, for, according to Stevenson, opportunity can 
also be found in a new mix of old ideas or in the creative application of traditional 
approaches.  A second factor is commitment to opportunity, or a revolutionary action 
orientation operating in a short time frame versus an evolutionary compromise process acting 
in an extended time frame.  The third factor is commitment of resources, specifically a 
multistage commitment of resources with minimum investment at each stage or decision point 
versus careful analysis and large scale commitment of resources after the decision to act.  

The fourth factor is control of resources, or the ability to leverage other people's 
resources deciding over time what resources need to be brought in-house versus the need to 
control and own a resource from the outset.  A fifth factor is management structure, that is 
awareness of progress through contact with principal players versus formal relationships 
which specific rights and responsibilities assigned through delegation of authority in a 
hierarchy.  The sixth factor is reward philosophy, that is compensation based on performance 
linked to value creation and teamwork versus compensation based on individual 
responsibility, assets controlled, short-term targets and reward through promotion to more 
responsibility.  

    Teresa Amabile has identified environmental stimulants and obstacles to creativity.9  
Stimulants include: the freedom to decide how to accomplish a task, good project 
management, sufficient resources, an environment free of threatening evaluation, a 
mechanism for considering new ideas, a collaborative environment, feedback and recognition 
systems, sufficient time, intriguing problems, and a sense of urgency.  Obstacles include: 
inappropriate reward systems, bureaucratic processes, low levels of cooperation, distrust of 
innovation, lack of control over own work, organizational disinterest, poor project 
management, an environment focused on criticism, insufficient resources, insufficient time, 
overemphasis on status quo, unhealthy competition, and self-defensive attitudes. 
 
    With these broad understandings of entrepreneurship and innovation, we can explore 
several of the key developments in the academy and the opportunities presented for library 
leadership and advancement.  

The Library as an Entrepreneurial Space

    Collins and Poras, in their 1994 work Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary 
Companies, describe the importance of Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) to innovate 
organizations, to stimulate bold progress, to enable the surpassing of competitors, and to 
create daunting but also energizing and focused direction.10  The distance learning and e-
commerce aspirations of many top American universities and colleges, working 
independently, in collaboration with other higher education organizations, in partnership with 
the private sector, or through spin-off structures, have taken the character of a BHAG.  This 
transformation in higher education in response to the perceived expansive markets for 
network learning challenges the library to rethink its nature and role.  The virtual campus 
demands rampant digital content creation, new strategies for information storage and 
management, more sophisticated search and query techniques, dependable and secure 
distribution and access systems, and new approaches to rights management. *  

    There are interesting and important parallels between the push of universities into 
cyberspace and some key aspects of American economic history.  The current rush to stake 
out Web space for educational enterprise is comparable to the nineteenth century land rush 
experience.  The massive economic benefits of the railroad and the transformations it 
engendered in so many industries aligns with the impacts of electronic commerce in so many 
areas.  And the extreme fragmentation and later rapid consolidation of utility industries such 
as electricity and telephone might predict a similar winnowing at some point of the online 
education industry.  We now see many layers developing around educational commerce, 
including numerous educational destinations for courses, many new educations portals or 
pipelines that aggregate offerings, and new business-to-business sites serving 
online learning.  

    American higher education is severely challenged in this competitive market 
increasingly dominated by new for-profit players.  Universities and colleges must be able to 
support the educational demands created by employment transitions and career changes and 
the needs of new majority students who are juggling families, jobs and education.  They must 
begin to view the undergraduate degree as a step and not the termination of an educational 
relationship with a student, and graduate learning as leading to a process of ongoing and 
global consultation and collaboration.  They must be able to deliver high quality and flexible 
learning into the corporation and the factory, and to forge educational partnerships with the K-
12 community.  Each of these thrusts will demand new thinking about how to support learners 
and teachers and about the information resources and collaborative tools they will require.  
How will higher education acquire sufficient infrastructure, quality courseware, willing 
faculty, comparable student services, enterprise management tools, and new delivery models"  
How will higher education successfully implement the  advantages of online learning such as 
interactivity, flexibility, functionality, cost of access, and support for diverse learning styles"  
Are there opportunities  for the academic library to be an aggressive partner in these new 
learning communities and to export resources, services and expertise into new markets"

    Scholarly activity  is the creation of knowledge and the evaluation of its validity, the 
preservation of knowledge, and the transmission of knowledge to others.11  The technologies, 
economics and institutions which underpin the research journal and the scholarly monograph, 
the traditional tools of communication, are being rapidly transformed.  It is clear, if not trite at 
this point, that scholarly communication costs too much, it takes too long, the higher 
education community gives too much away, and the consequent crisis has gone unrecognized 
as a public policy issue.  The library and higher education communities have consistently 
advocated several core interests: a competitive market, easy distribution and reuse to serve 
learning and scholarship, innovative applications of technology, quality assurance and 
permanent archiving.  

    The urge to publish must be understood, that is, why are the faculty on our campuses 
so highly motivated to share their research results with colleagues"  Clearly, scholars want to 
communicate their findings and they are concerned about the long-term availability of their 
ideas.  They have been nurtured in an academic culture which celebrates scholarship and 
which links prestige, recognition and rewards to productivity and scholarly output.  And for 
some there is even financial profit from publishing activity.  Libraries must recognize there 
motivations as new models of electronic scholarly publishing are developed and implemented. 

    While the traditional commercial publishing model remains central to scholarly work, 
several new strategies or models have been advanced and academic libraries have been 
actively involved in leadership and supporting roles:

 *  The academic server model proposes that universities obtain the newly prepared 
research papers from their faculties and make them available over the global network, 
or take responsibility for posting the work of scholars from around the world in 
selected disciplines;
 *  The prestigious publishing model calls upon scholarly societies and university presses 
to expand their electronic publishing activities, particularly for scholarly journals;
 *  The digital library model emphasizes the work of libraries in digitizing usually unique 
materials in the collection and making them available on the Internet;
 *  The electronic book model is leading to expansive databases of book-length materials 
and to experiments in some disciplines to prepare new works for online use;
 *  The electronic collections model pulls together diverse formats on a common theme 
into a dynamic and current database; 
 *  The university publishing cooperative model, including SPARC as an example, seeks 
to forge partnerships that will launch competitive ventures characterized by reasonable 
prices and support for the access needs of higher education;
 *  The public domain or open archives model is focused on free and open access to the 
work of scholars.  The North American Electronic Article Repository (NEAR) 
proposal is an example of an attempt to retain intellectual property ownership in the 
cademic community;
 *  The government server model demonstrates the rampant growth in Web publishing by 
departments and agencies at all levels of government;
 *  The retrospective model seeks to capture electronically the historical literature in a 
field.  JSTOR is the prime example for scholarly journals;
 *  The preprint server model is an attempt by an expanding number of disciplines to 
enable researchers to post new research papers on a Web-accessible database prior to 
formal publication; and
 *  The peer review lite model is a similar effort in disciplines where a level of review is 
deemed necessary to verify the legitimacy of works submitted. *  

Clearly, the scholarly communication landscape is complex and diverse and is going to be 
reshaped over the next decade. Are there opportunities for libraries to be key players in these 
new publishing ventures and to build a new economic framework for organizing, accessing 
and archiving the scholarly record"

The Entrepreneurial Imperative at the Johns Hopkins University Libraries

    The framework for academic library participation in the learning and scholarly 
communication processes must be rethought, and new structures for promoting library 
partnerships with faculty are essential.  The model that has been developed in the Libraries at 
Johns Hopkins is the Digital Knowledge Center which was launched in 1997.  It is a hub for 
research and development in the creation, production, marketing, distribution and archiving of 
electronic information, instructional resources, and scholarly works.  It is a laboratory for 
experimenting with and employing new technologies in teaching, learning, and research.  It 
serves as a magnet for a wide range of skills from across the library and for faculty 
collaboration as it focuses on electronic pedagogy, electronic publishing, emerging 
technologies, usability/human factors, and knowledge management.  Several current examples 
of projects in the Digital Knowledge Center illustrate its entrepreneurial potential.

Project Muse is a partnership between the library and the university press which is 
distributing on the Web on a subscription basis the journals published at Hopkins and a 
growing number of other university presses.  This business initiative, with seed funding from 
NEH and the Mellon Foundation, combined quality content with sophisticated searching 
capabilities, favorable licensing terms, and attractive price options to launch a profitable 
venture and a model for electronic journal publishing.

The Comprehensive Access to Print Materials (CAPM) project is a partnership among the 
library, faculty from economics and engineering, and several corporations.  It seeks to 
integrate digital and robotics technologies to expand user access to library collections stored 
remotely and to restore the browsability of these materials online.  With funding from the 
Mellon Foundation, a rigorous economic analysis has been carried out and prototype 
technology is being designed.  U.S. and international patents are being secured to protect the 
future capitalization potential of the product. 

The Levy Sheet Music project involved the digitization of over 120,000 pages of popular 
American music including cover art, now completed and available on the Web.  This phase of 
the project was funded by NEH.  The next phase of the project includes a partnership with 
faculty in the Hopkins music conservatory and with a corporation to develop a digitization 
workflow process, to create through sophisticated software a digital sound file and to enable 
searchability by musical notation and sound.  Funding has been secured from the National 
Science Foundation and IMLS.

A new project in development will seek to create a global research database touching on the 
multi-disciplinary fields of Extreme Wind Events (EWE).  Faculty from such academic areas 
as geography, meteorology, engineering, economics, and public health will be drawn into 
project planning. Scholarly societies and government agencies dealing with disasters such as 
hurricanes and tornadoes will be involved.  The goal is to enhance worldwide scholarly 
communication in these areas and to promote the online availability of research data. 

The City in Disciplinary Perspectives project is a partnership between the library and faculty 
from several disciplines which seeks to take the Web site and electronic resources for this 
experimental course and develop it into a multimedia digital kit that can be used in other 
educational settings.  Funding from NEH enabled a series of focus group discussions with 
representatives from a variety of colleges to evaluate the product and its usability and 
adaptability.

The Civility Project is a partnership between the library and faculty from several humanities 
disciplines to create a Web database of global research and electronic texts in the areas of 
customs, manners, and courtesy in historical and contemporary life.  It will also serve as a tool 
for the posting and discussion of new research and for delivering educational activities into 
various settings. 

The Medieval Manuscripts Digitization project is a partnership between the library, faculty 
in literature and history, American and overseas libraries and museums, and corporate 
partners to digitize the images and texts of a French medieval manuscript .  Funding from two 
foundations enabled the library to convene a colloquium of scholars, librarians, and 
technologists to discuss the goals, standards, protocols and academic applications for 
digitizing such scholarly manuscripts and to bring the group back together to evaluate the 
usability of the products.  

    These examples of projects being advanced through the Libraries at Johns Hopkins 
have several important characteristics: active faculty participation,  a  research and 
development focus, innovative applications of technology, academic and corporate 
partnerships, foundation and federal funding, and a potential for capitalization and marketing.  
They reflect an entrepreneurial culture and an innovative spirit.


The Pieces of the Entrepreneurial Puzzle

    Effective faculty relationships are essential to the success of the academic library and 
contribute in powerful ways to entrepreneurial opportunities.12  Faculty as researchers are 
among the primary consumers of library collections and services.  They also produce, as 
authors and editors, the scholarly literature which is acquired by the library.  Their teaching 
activities and course requirements determine the nature and intensity of library use by 
students.  Faculty occupy positions of administrative and policy leadership which influence 
the financial and political status of the library in the institution.  And faculty are increasingly 
involved as advocates and partners in the development of the digital library.  

    Faculty bring diverse but important priorities, interests and expectations to their work 
at the university.  They seek personal advancement and recognition in their disciplines and, in 
some cases, academic administrative opportunities.  They want to contribute to the literature 
and prestige of their fields and, therefore, often actively pursue external funding in the form of 
grants and endowments to support their work and that of their students.  They strive to 
produce high quality instructional content and experiences, and to advance students into 
successful careers or prestigious graduate and professional programs.  They are interested in 
working on innovative projects and collaborating with interesting and accomplished 
colleagues.  They expect financial recognition of their efforts in the form of compensation 
and, as appropriate, profit from their publications, inventions, software or expert consultation.  
And increasingly, they demand access to the best laboratory, technology and library 
capabilities, as well as opportunities to experiment with technology in their teaching and 
research.  

It is important that the library understand these motivations as relationships and 
collaborations with faculty are developed. *  To this end, a taxonomy of faculty and library 
relationships can be outlined:

 *  The servant relationship places the library in a position of responding to faculty 
demands without an opportunity to influence expectations and without mutual respect;  
 *  The stranger relationship is characterized by faculty and library communities which do 
not work together but coexist independently in the academy;
 *  The parallel relationship describes a situation where faculty and library activities do 
not intersect, where library collections and services are underutilized and where 
faculty information needs are satisfied from other sources;
 *  The friend relationship positions the faculty and library as cooperative and mutually 
supportive more out of tradition than intense dependence;
 *  The partner relationship is built on a mutual dependence and a shared commitment to 
improving the quality of both the library and the university;
 *  The customer relationship places the library and the faculty in a market relationship 
with a recognition of the consumer and broker nature of the interaction;
 *  The team or knowledge management relationship realizes a fuller integration of 
interests and activities and high levels of personal investment in collaboration.  

These descriptions of faculty and library relationships are not complete or mutually exclusive, 
but they do illustrate the evolution of the quality and impact of the interaction and its 
centrality to library innovation and participation in the academic life of the institution.

    Other relationships are important as well both within and outside the university. *  The 
advancement of a research and development agenda through the library involves intense and 
ongoing contact with numerous campus offices, including the university counsel and 
technology transfer office for legal and patent questions.  Government relations, research 
grants, foundation relations, alumni relations and university development can put the library 
in touch with potential funding sources.  Financial planning and human resources can assist 
with business development, organizational change, personnel recruitment and retention, and 
staff development.  The information technology and network organizations are central to 
infrastructure development.  And the public relations office can help with getting the word out 
about accomplishments.  

    Similarly, broad cooperation locally, regionally, nationally and internationally through 
consortium relationships and institutional partnerships is essential to a successful 
entrepreneurial agenda.  In addition to faculty partnerships, academic libraries are 
increasingly seeking out effective working relationships with computing units, with 
publishers, with corporations and businesses, with museums and other cultural organizations, 
and with government agencies.  

    Organizational flexibility and agility are essential, and structural and personnel policy 
development may be valuable.  This might include selective outsourcing of technology 
support and operations.  On the human resources side, strategies such as expanded temporary 
or fixed term appointments, enhanced organizational fluidity and flattening, frequent staff 
sharing and consultation, facilitative management and small group training, a salary bonus 
program, and an incentive compensation program may be needed.  

    As libraries become more involved in entrepreneurial projects, it is important to also 
focus on critical information policy issues.  These include intellectual property/copyright, 
Internet development and availability, telecommunications, privacy, intellectual freedom, 
information technology research funding, and information technology workforce 
development, for example.  These policy arenas will influence the ability of the academic 
community to advance the education and research agenda.  

    Copyright developments are particularly noteworthy.  As the globalization of 
copyright through WIPO treaty agreements strives to harmonize national policies, sometimes 
unfriendly to American market traditions and economic values, this has spawned a series of 
significant legislative initiatives. In the U.S., this includes copyright term extension, the 
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the database bills, and now the Uniform Computer 
Information Transactions Act (UCITA).  Pressures to create copyright use guidelines for 
electronic information have been successfully resisted by the library and education 
communities.  Licensing has expanded rapidly as to the tool for libraries to negotiate the 
terms of access and use for digital resources and sometimes at the expense of fair use 
capabilities. Technological controls are being implemented by publishers of electronic 
information, and are advancing from passive "password or IP domain" models to more active 
"encryption or self-help" strategies.  And challenges on copyright ownership are numerous.  
Writers and scholars are questioning the right of publishers to recycle their works in new 
electronic publications, researchers are asserting co-ownership of their own journal articles, 
and college faculty are debating ownership of new academic publications such a courseware 
and software.  These developments have created extraordinary conflicts in the information 
marketplace between the interests of the community of production and the community of 
consumption. 
  
    Perhaps the fullest expression of the entrepreneurial development in the academic 
library is the expanding interest in the organization of business operations to create new 
income streams for the organization.  In the Libraries at Johns Hopkins, this has been 
mandated by the long-range campus financial plan and involves the library generating *  new 
resources from non-development sources, largely through e-commerce initiatives.  The 
Hopkins Libraries had already been leveraging assets to produce new income.  This includes 
leveraging attractive space by leasing a special collections library for social events, leveraging 
traffic by outsourcing a coffee cart in the central library, leveraging space by making the 
storage facility available to other libraries, leveraging technology by bringing other local 
libraries onto the library management system, leveraging content by implementing the sale of 
products which feature images from the collections, leveraging preservation and instructional 
services to external customers, and leveraging expertise to launch publishing projects.  It also 
will include instructional technology services, a usability lab, software and technology 
product development, all designed to serve the Hopkins community but also seeking to build 
new revenue for the Libraries.  

    The objectives of these entrepreneurial business initiatives is to produce new income 
to benefit library collections and services, to learn through these activities and to apply these 
lessons to library programs, to secure expanded visibility in the national library and 
information technology communities, and to increase credibility in the University where the 
tradition for such activities in the academic divisions is established.  

    The focus is now on e-commerce development, and a series of programs has been 
organized including: virtual electronic library for distance learning universities, corporate 
electronic library service, school (7-12) electronic library service, personal research librarian, 
and personal electronic library. *  A contract has been signed with a well-established and large 
distance learning university with a global student body.  Negotiations are underway with 
several commercial and university-based organizations that provide educational and tutoring 
services to junior and senior high school students.  Discussions are proceeding with a major 
consumer health portal on the provision of the personal research librarian service.  Plans are 
underway to launch a comprehensive information service for Hopkins alumni and for several 
corporate clusters in the Baltimore region.  Across these various activities, a tiered suite of 
library services has been designed and is being offered, including:  a customized information 
Web site or portal, electronic reference service, electronic reference and full-text databases, 
document delivery, personal librarian research, customized information profiling, and 
strategic information analysis and intelligence.

    These entrepreneurial activities present some significant challenges for the Libraries, 
and include: creating a firewall between these business developments and the support being 
provided to Hopkins students and faculty, finding risk and development capital, developing 
and recruiting staff skills for business ventures, creating the technology infrastructure, 
managing intellectual property and legal concerns, moving from cost recovery to profit 
models, moving from staff to software mediation to handle expanding volume of transactions, 
and forging effective business partnerships within the University and with outside 
organizations to help grow the business program.

Conclusion

    In the process, we ask ourselves fundamental questions.13  Can we offer additional 
information or transaction services to our existing customer base"  Can we address the needs 
of new customer segments by repackaging our current information assets or by creating new 
business capabilities through the Internet"  Can we use our ability to attract customers to 
generate new sources of revenue"  Will our business be significantly harmed by other 
companies providing some of the same value which we currently offer"  How do we become 
a customer magnet through electronic commerce"  How do we build direct links to new 
customers"  How do we take away bits of value digitally from other companies"  Can we use 
the Internet as both a tool for global learning and scholarly communication and for technology 
transfer and entrepreneurial activities"

    Two recent Harvard Business Review articles powerfully capture the opportunities and 
challenges of the new economy and present some important direction for the academy and the 
academic library.  Evans and Wurster in "Strategy and the New Economics of Information,"14 
note that "Incumbents could easily become victims of their obsolete physical infrastructures 
and their own psychology" and "existing value chains will fragment into multiple businesses, 
each of which will have its own sources of competitive advantage." *  And Hamel in "Bringing 
the Silicon Valley  Inside,"15 emphasizes that "In industry after industry, unorthodox start-ups 
are challenging complacent incumbents" and "if you want to free the entrepreneurial spirit in 
your organization, you must create and sustain dynamic internal markets for ideas, capital and 
talent."

    Entrepreneurial initiatives that build on e-commerce capabilities must be sensitive to 
new measures that are very different than what has governed our thinking in the academic 
library, for example:

    QUALITY *  = *  CONTENT *   + *   FUNCTIONALITY
    VALUE *  = *   CONTENT *   + *   TRAFFIC

    PRICE *  does not equal *  COST OF INPUTS
    PRICE *   = *   PERCEIVED QUALITY *  + *   VALUE

    SUCCESS *  does not equal *  RESOURCE ALLOCATION
    SUCCESS *   = *   RESOURCE ATTRACTION

    Successful entrepreneurial activities in the academic library will require a redefinition 
of the physical, expertise and intellectual infrastructure, and a new understanding of the 
geography, psychology and economics of innovation.  That is the where, who, how and why 
of productive change. *  Advancing the entrepreneurial imperative will demand a commitment 
to the tools of the trade, and these include business plans, competitive strategies and venture 
capital.  And it will mean advancing from incremental to radical change.


Endnotes

1.  This paper was originally presented as the Schwing Library Lecture at Louisiana State 
University on October 28, 1999.
2.  Close, David and Carl Bridge, The Meaning of Revolution, London: Croom Helm, 1985.
3.  Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago 
Press, 1996.
4.  These ideas on revolutionary change were originally presented in a lecture at the 
University of Georgia on April 7, 1997 and later published in a reduced version in Collection 
Development in a Digital Environment, pp. 3-17, Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information 
Press, 1999.
5.  These ideas on the advantages of the digital medium were originally presented in a lecture 
at the China-USA Conference on Global Information Access in Beijing, China on August 26, 
1996.
6.  Stevenson, Howard H., "A Perspective on Entrepreneurship," pp. 7-22, The 
Entrepreneurial Venture, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999.
7.  Stevenson.
8.  Stevenson.
9.  Amabile, Teresa M., "Managing for Creativity," pp. 521-536, The Entrepreneurial 
Venture, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999.
10.  Collins, James C. and Jerry I. Porras, Built To Last:  Successful Habits of Visionary 
Companies, New York: Harper Collins, 1997.  These ideas on the role of the academic library 
in distance learning were also presented in a lecture at the International Association of 
Technological University Libraries in Brisbane, Australia on July 3, 2000.
11.  These ideas on scholarly communication were also presented in a lecture at the 
University of Oklahoma on March 5, 1998.
12.  These ideas on library and faculty collaboration were originally presented at the 
Kanazawa Institute of Technology Roundtable for Library and Information Science in Japan 
on July 15, 1999.
13.  Ghosh, Shikhar, "Making Business Sense of the Internet," pp. 101-115, The 
Entrepreneurial Venture, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999.
14. Evans, Philip B. and Thomas S. Wurster, "Strategy and the New Economics of 
Information," Harvard Business Review, September-October 1997, pp. 71-82.
15. Hamel, Gary, "Bringing Silicon Valley Inside,"  Harvard Business Review, September-
October 1999, pp. 71-84.