The self-provisioned information system: how digital entrepreneurs assemble, and mis-assemble, business information infrastructure in the absence of formal library services

Abstract

Business and finance librarianship provides entrepreneurs with curated collections, reference services, financial literacy instruction, and market intelligence. Yet most entrepreneurs in emerging economies operate where no such services exist, and how they meet their business information needs in that absence is poorly understood. Drawing on thirty-six semi-structured interviews with digital technology founders in Nigeria, analyzed through a Critical Realist methodology, this study finds that entrepreneurs self-provision a complete substitute information system, here termed the vernacular business library, from five informal landscapes: kin and maternal networks, mentorship, online platforms and communities, narrative entertainment media, and self-directed reading. Each landscape performs recognizable business librarianship functions, from special collections and reference consultation to current awareness and bibliotherapy. The study also documents twenty-three disconfirming and adverse episodes in which these same landscapes fail, producing misinformation, exploitation, echo chambers, obsolescence, and paralysis, alongside one counter-case in which a founder bypassed the vernacular system and relied on a formal library. It specifies the activating conditions under which self-provisioned information systems succeed, namely trust, source evaluation, currency, local fit, and critical framing, and the failure modes that emerge when these are absent. The study contributes a function-and-failure mapping between informal landscapes and professional service equivalents, and proposes landscape librarianship, a service paradigm in which business and finance librarians embed professional capability, particularly quality assurance and critical information literacy, inside the informal channels entrepreneurs already trust. The article discusses implications for financial literacy programming, information evaluation instruction, and service design in underserved and well-resourced contexts.