Prospects of cooperation between university libraries and technological incubators in entrepreneurship: The new central library at Cairo University is a model

Document Type : last version

Author

Department of Libraries, Documents and Information, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University

10.21608/ijlis.2024.255904.1226

Abstract

University libraries occupy an important position in supporting innovation and scientific research, and enabling the academic community to contribute to promoting entrepreneurship, so there was a constant need to achieve ways of cooperation between them and the executive authorities concerned with this field, including technological incubators, with which cooperation will contribute to achieving their goals, by seeking to Developing its services and resources to keep pace with successive developments in the field of technology and communications; Entrepreneurs have become an important societal sector for these libraries to complete their role by attracting this category of beneficiaries to their services and information resources and effective marketing for them. Although this topic has been addressed in many foreign studies, it has not received sufficient attention from Arab studies, especially in what it can offer. University libraries in this regard. Therefore, the study aimed to monitor the role of university libraries in supporting entrepreneurship, highlight their international experiences in this field, the challenges they face and ways to address them, study the goals that technological incubators seek to achieve in entrepreneurship, and activate their programs in Egyptian universities. And study the activities provided by the new central library at Cairo University in entrepreneurship and develop a proposed vision for the prospects for cooperation between it and technological incubators, including: the business incubator at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University.
The study relied on the descriptive approach in its case study style, and the content analysis method using a set of tools represented by a checklist, questionnaire, personal interview, and direct observation, in addition to a survey of Arab and foreign intellectual production on the subject of the study. The study reached a set of results, including: The College of Economics and Political Science incubator confirmed that it had not cooperated with university libraries before, as it indicated that its lack of awareness of the importance of sharing library services and activities in implementing and activating pioneering projects was one of the most important reasons that led to the lack of cooperation with it. The role of the New Central Library at Cairo University was limited to hosting events related to entrepreneurship competitions and innovative projects, and the training camp for the Entrepreneurship Club. The study ends with a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: the need for Cairo University to be keen on establishing more incubators because of their effective role in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship and establishing and
activating cooperation between the university’s new central library and technological incubators, and let this cooperation begin through the incubator of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science. As the first incubators in Egyptian public universities, and its success in adopting many distinguished innovative projects, allocating the central library to co-working spaces for entrepreneurs, and effectively marketing the innovative projects adopted by the incubator.

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