Business Center Newsletter

 The fall season is upon us and the Business Center has been busy putting together its Fall series of programming. This season promises to bring back Baltimore CASH with their amazing offerings on financial education designed to help Maryland’s citizens get the most out of their taxes, save money, start a small business, and learn of the many programs available to them for assistance. Some of the topics being offered are on small business basics, wills and estates, and protecting your assets through the right insurance plan. The schedule for these courses is online at the Business Center Web site.

We also have Bruce Nowakowski returning this year with two programs in October on using Quickbooks for the small business owner or manager (See our calendar on our Web site for more details). These two programs cover the basics and are about 3 hours each. All you need to bring is a pen, pad, and lots of questions. Bruce has many years of experience as a small business accountant and has been using Quickbooks for a long time.

The Business Librarian, Ray O’Keefe Cruitt, will be offering a Business Plan Research program on December 17 from 6 to 7:45pm at Pratt’s Herring Run branch for those who are thinking about writing a business plan and are not sure what resources are available and where to get access to them.

The Pratt library has an excellent collection of resources, both in print and electronic form for both the business and investor researcher. As we mentioned, we’ve added a new database published by Standard & Poor’s, NetAdvantage; and this year we’re in the works to add even more to our collection. These and much more are just some of the things that will be covered in this class.

Some things are in the process of changing here in the Business, Science and Technology department. We have re-arranged our books in such a way as to clear up space for a laptop lounge for a more comfortable place to come in and do your business research. You can bring in your own laptop or check out one of ours. The construction is still in progress, but should be completed soon. We hope this will attract our researchers to come by and spend some time comfortably while getting their work done.

And, finally, we’d like to finish up with a highlight of one of our most popular databases, Reference USA. Ref USA is a multifaceted database that maintains records of thousands and thousands of businesses all over the world; and while this may sound like glorified yellow pages, it is much, much more than that. Ref USA all provides substantial information about small to large, private to public companies, such as management personnel, business demographics (which includes estimated annual revenues), estimated business expenses, competitor’s report and more. Ref USA has recently made it possible to search their database accurately by NAICS code (North American Industrial Classification System). They have also produced a feature that allows the researcher to identify which businesses have been verified by their information researchers headquartered in Omaha, NE, this way you know the information you’re getting is up-to-date and accurate. You can search the database by verified or unverified records.

One last thing about Ref USA is their new module on lifestyles. This module, which can be accessed the same way you access the business database, provides population characteristics, such as how many people in one area like sports or playing golf or other lifestyle interests. This is an excellent resource for those who are doing demographics research because it allows the researcher to narrow down to geographic areas or populations with lifestyle characteristics relevant to the product or service being offered.

We are excited about this Fall’s offering and hope you can make it to some of our programs.

Thanks!
Business Center