Infopreneurship: Solutions for the unemployed LIS aspirants

Introduction The term ‘infopreneurship’ is a relatively new term in the discipline of Library and Information Science (LIS), although its function has been in existence ever since the beginning of information consulting and brokering. Coulson–Thomas (2000), in his article entitled “Developing and supporting information entrepreneurs”, describes infopreneurs as information entrepreneurs. McCreadie and Rice in Ikoja-Odongo and Mostert (2006) describe information as a commodity or resource. They go further to characterize it as a physical commodity that can be produced, purchased, replicated, distributed, manipulated, passed along, controlled, traded and sold. Du Toit (2000) defines the term ‘entrepreneur’ as that particular individual in society who takes the lead as well as the risk in mobilizing the production factors (natural resources, human resources and capital) in specific combinations to produce products and services for his or her community. A closer look reveals that information is defined as a resource and an entrepreneur is defined as someone who mobilizes production factors to produce products and services. Given this background, an infopreneur is therefore perceived to be an individual who sells information (Chandler, 2007). Thus, someone who sells information products and services. This concurs with Berry’s (1994) assertion that infopreneurs produce information products and services. Information intermediaries (information brokers and information consultants) conduct their services in the same manner. This paper focuses on exploring the importance, areas, future and challenges of infopreneurship, the suitability of the curriculum, and how students can be motivated to be infopreneurs, as alluded to earlier.