Research Blog : business

Be A Smarter Consumer

SuDocQueen@evpl — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:39:00 GMT

That’s what it says on the front of the 2009 Consumer Action Handbook, and that’s what this book is trying to help us all become. Created by the GSA ( U.S. General Services Administration) Federal Citizen Information Center in conjunction with several other federal agencies and corporations, the book offers a multitude of useful information and resources for the in-the-know and the wanting-to-know consumer.

The book breaks into IV sections. The first gives detailed tips for consumers on subjects that range from buying a car or TV to choosing health insurance and a doctor to how to protect oneself against identity theft and how to handle wills and funerals. The subjects are too numerous to completely list here, but each topic is addressed fully. The second section offers advice for filing a complaint, how to use Dispute Resolution Programs, and covers Small Claims Court as well as contacts for reporting fraud and safety hazards. The third part lists additional sources for consumer information, and the fourth is a long list of direct contacts for assistance from the government and corporate America.

We have two circulating copies of this little gem as well as a reference copy here at Central. Or, since those of you reading this obviously have computer access, if you prefer you can get the same information from the www.ConsumerAction.gov website. If the website’s information seems too chaotic and you’d prefer the information displayed the same way it would be in the book, you can use the PDF from the website instead. One nice little extra on the website is the Consumer News section. It’s a box situated on the right hand side of the main page and offers links to events of consumer interest like “Kolcraft Recalls 1 Million Play Yards Due to Fall Hazard” or “Five Tax Facts About Summertime Child Care Expenses.”

Upcoming Workshops for Employers and HR People

Bufkinite@evpl — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:27:00 GMT

A series of three workshops taking place in April will address issues all employers must address when looking to hire new employees. The workshops are co-sponsored by Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library’s Business Central and the Evansville Branch of Manpower. Beth Delano, Branch Manager of Manpower, and Steve Cochran, Reference Services Supervisor at EVPL’s Central Library, will lead all of the workshops. All three workshops begin at 9:00 a.m., and take place in the Large Group Room on the second floor of Central Library.

Registration is required for all workshops, and is limited to 20 participants. You can register online now!

April 15^th: Writing Successful Position Descriptions

The best way to attract the most highly qualified applicants to your business is to have well written job descriptions that spell out in detail the qualifications sought and responsibilities entailed. This one hour workshop will cover how to format position descriptions, why formal job descriptions are something you should have, and address issues with ADA compliance.

You’ll also learn about library resources available for developing formal job descriptions, including online resources available through the library's web site.

April 22^nd: Hiring Right the First Time

It’s estimated that the hiring and training of an employee costs the employer the equivalent of one and a half times the employee’s annual earnings, so hiring an employee to doesn’t stick around can be a very expensive proposition. The first workshop in this series looked at how to develop position descriptions that target the talent you’re looking for.

This one hour workshop will take the next step, outlining how to market those position descriptions so that you get the best applicants available in the pool, how to look at review resumes to match qualifications with expectations, and give you tips for interviewing that will reveal the candidate best suited to your position.

You’ll also learn about library resources and tools that address recruiting, interviewing, and hiring.

April 29^th: Retaining Employees

The first two sessions of this series showed participants how to write position descriptions to attract the best candidates, and how to then recruit, vet, and interview those candidates to hire the very best person for each position.

The final workshop in this series will examine strategies employers can use to retain high-performing employees, including developing retention-focused managers, being aware of generational differences in work style, engaging employees in challenging responsibilities, and developing a recognition program.

You’ll also be shown library resources and tools that address motivating, challenging, retaining, and recognizing employees.

New database for corporate info

googler@evpl — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:53:00 GMT

EVPL is now subscribing to the Million Dollar Database, which provides detailed information on over 250,000 public and private companies with at least $9 million in annual sales or at least 180 employees. Company data is updated frequently to ensure the most accurate information possible.

Company profiles include specialty information like executive biographies, number of employees, sales, year established, and Dun & Bradstreet's "prescreen score," assessing the risk of delinquent payment. The database offers you unlimited searching, viewing and printing of detailed company profiles with contact information.

The database is especially designed to help you find in-depth company and contact information, find new sales opportunities, conduct marketing research, and identify potential job opportunities. With that in mind, the database includes a Basic Search for simple company lookups, and a Search Designer that lets you search by a combination of over 30 criteria. And using the Million Dollar Database's File Builder, you can easily download a list of leads in minutes.

The initial search screen is a very simple, with search boxes for company name and location. (On this screen you can also search by phone number or SIC codes if you have that data but no company name.) For more complex searches, choose "advanced search" and choose from the list of criteria (zip code, minority owned, size by sales or employees, etc.). Be sure to click "add to criteria" and then make sure your "current search criteria" contains the ones you chose.

After you click "run search," you'll be able to sort the result list, click an entity name for detailed info, and select records to download.

A PDF file with more information on using the database can be found here.

As with all databases, call Reference Services at 428-8218 if you have any questions!

New Database Brings the World to your Desktop

Bufkinite@evpl — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:26:00 GMT

A new database called Global Road Warrior brings you comprehensive information on 175 countries around the world. And when I say "comprehensive" that is exactly what I mean. There is information in over 100 specific areas for each country listed.

There is basic information like geography (including flags and maps for each country), govenment, and climate; information about the society and culture, like standard greetings and courtesies, food peculiar to the area (including recipes), holidays, religions, and sports; information about how business is conducted, with special attention given to women in business; information about the currency used there, including a currency converter; and infrastructure information including electricity, telephones, Internet connectivity and ISPs, telegram, fax, and postal services.

In addition, there is a "security briefing" for every country taken directly from the CIA's World Factbook, health and medical information, and contact information - addresses, email, and telephone numbers - for all foreign embassies and consulates within each country.

Below left is a screen shot of the home page for Mongolia. The menu on the left is standard for each country, and includes the information outlined above and much more. Below right is a close-up of the standard menu, with an example of the sub-menu choices for "Society and Culture," to give you an idea of the richness of this resource.

Teachers will especially enjoy global road warrior! The maps listed for each country include a simple outline map as well as an outline map that includes outlines of states & provinces. There is also a list of "essential terms" for each country: how to say "hello," "goodbye," "yes," "no," and the other essential words and phrases you'll need to get around.

The search interface is very easy to use, and allows you to search within a particular country, or search for a particular term across all countries. Try it today and see what you think about EVPL's newest database offering.

Evansville Historical Records for Businesses and Immigrants

seeker@evpl — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:51:00 GMT

The people at the Browning Family Foundation, who brought you the Browning Genealogy Database (Evansville area newspaper obituaries) and contributed to the Local History Database, have constructed 3 more historical databases to help local history buffs!

If you're looking for an early business and want to know when it started or who started it, many businesses filed Articles of Association with the courts. The Browning Family Foundation volunteers and employees have indexed these records covering the 1850's up to the 1980's in the Evansville, IN Business Entity Database. The Simple Search allows you to search by the name of the business or by the names of the businessmen signing the Articles of Association, usually principal officers and major investors. The record you see will include the business name, type of business, and the names of associated businessmen. Advanced search can search on any portion or combination of business type (church, oil refinery, livestock), business name, individual's name or address.

If you're interested in early immigrants to this area, check out their 2nd database. The Evansville IN Immigration Database allows you to search the intentions to immigrate and naturalization papers from 1850's to 1920's filed in Vanderburgh and Warrick Counties. In Advanced search, you will be able to search by any combination of name (last or first), birth location or date, or country emigrated from. The records differ, but may give name, petition number & page & vol number, birth date & location, country emigrated from, arrival location or vessel or date, occupation, current address, names of family members, and notes the petitioner thought important to include. These books are old and fragile and are due to soon be sent to the Indiana State Archives. As time permits, photos of the original pages will be attached to the information already abstracted so that these important documents will still be available to genealogists.

The 3rd database, Browning Obituaries, is an ongoing work-in-progress to expand the information available in the Browning Genealogy Database with obituary information from 3 more counties: White County (IL), Gibson County, and Posey County. In some cases, this will include scans of the actual newspaper obituaries with photo. Additional information available includes records, photo, and biographical essays from the Browning Funeral Home.

I was delighted to try these databases out to see how much information is in them and how many different ways they are indexed. Genealogists and those interested in local history will be first in line, but they're rather intriguing just to poke around in. Kudos to the industrious people at Browning Family Foundation for their hard work in making these databases of valuable information available!

Business Central Now Open For...(wait for it)...Business!!

Bufkinite@evpl — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:21:00 GMT

On Wednesday, October 15th, the Metropolitian Evansville Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting on the second floor of Central Library to open a new, business-focused area of Central's reference and non-fiction collections.

Business Central is many things:

It's a place within Central Library, on the second floor. This location gathers legal and business reference materials, and a cooperating collection of the Foundation Center, with numberous reference resources for finding grants for non-profit and not-for-profit corporations. It also offers an extensive circulating collection of materials dealing with management, commerce, international commerce, marketing, public relations, customer relations, finance, planning, and career development and advancement.

It's a web presence with the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library web site that links to resources within the library and on the web that have to do with everything from starting a business to managing time, money, and personnel.

It's a team of library professionals who know business and the information needs of entrepreneurs and business professionals.

So whether you've already got a business up and running or are planning to start one; whether you're looking for capital or strategic planning information; whether you're doing in-depth market research, or just wanting to stay abreast of current business and economic trends, Business Central is your destination for business information!

America’s Bank Crisis –Quick Information Links

seeker@evpl — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:08:00 GMT

I just had a question from a person who wanted some quick Internet sites to follow the recent bill, "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008" that was approved by the Senate October 1, the House October 3, and signed into law by the President . Here's a 1 page summary of it: http://banking.senate.gov/public/_files/latestversionEESASummary.pdf .

Some news sites that I follow have some good up-to-date articles: CNN Money Magazine - special issue on America's Money Crisis, Google News - recent news articles on the Wall Street Crisis, and NPR's Economy Section news.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures individual bank accounts. Find current news of failed and merged banks, and under Top Search Results, find Failed Banks List, reports of Conditions & Income and Thrift Financial Reports for your bank, or use "Edie the Estimator" to calculate your FDIC insurance coverage for your deposit accounts.

And finally, what will it cost and how will it impact federal finances? Here's the Congressional Budget Office Analysis: http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=173

Financial information at Kiplinger

googler@evpl — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:04:00 GMT

Kiplinger.com offers an amazing array of financial advice and news, all for free.

There's help for individuals and families on understanding credit, managing money, investing, and many of aspects of the basics of money. The car center allows you to compare price and features. Starting out is perfect for financial advice for those in their 20s and 30s.

For businesses, there's a business resource center, offering forecasts and advice. It includes the small business center, featuring a variety of articles and resources especially for entrepreneurs, start-ups, and other small businesses.

This site also covers up-to-date financial news and analysis, like the current banking and credit crisis. Those articles will be found linked on their front page, or in the Business Resource Center.

In all, a very useful resource for a variety of needs.

Indiana Economic Digest – New! -- Indiana Business News Stories Online

seeker@evpl — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:08:00 GMT

A new Indiana business news source has just gone online. Do you need to know who's hiring, who's firing, and what programs the local, state, and federal government is pushing? Indiana Economic Digest is a daily collection of business, housing, health and development news stories from daily Indiana newspapers. You can check out the most recent state-wide news or look for stories in your county or region. You can concentrate on a business topic or a government category. Read it all or sign up for email updates on the topic or region of your choice at http://www.indianaeconomicdigest.net .

Life behind ... coffee bars?

E-Ville Librarian@evpl — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:41:00 GMT

An interesting article on the Mother Jones website is quite eye opening. Many times I have heard people say, "We should make prisoners work for their keep. All they do is watch TV and smoke cigarettes." It would appear that in some states, they do just that. The last entry in the list seems to be the funniest, yet cruelest of the bunch.

LOC business webliography (and finding it again)

googler@evpl — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:31:00 GMT

One of the content feeds I've subscribed to is the Resource Shelf, which describes itself as "a daily newsletter with resources of interest to information professionals, educators and journalists." A recent entry (I'm a little behind -- it's from July 14) looked at what editor Shirl Kennedy called "niche statistics" and contains a diverse array of really specialized statistical sources on the web.

The link that really caught my eye was to wedding industry research, from Library of Congress Business Reference Services. Not the first part, the second -- the LOC's Business Reference Services, which I hadn't been aware of. Clicking the link and looking around a bit got me to the main page for their Business Reference Services, and from there to their list of internet resources. Thinking it looked pretty cool (and noticing it has a section for marketing research, something I'm always on the lookout for), I started wondering how I would find it again.

I not a big fan of bookmarking. I also don't like accumulating links via Del.icio.us particularly, either, although I make use of the hive mind there to find stuff sometimes. I prefer figuring out the search that's going to get me to the site again. (Yeah, this backfires sometimes.) I generally assume that I'm going to forget the actual name of the page but remember something about its location -- in this case, I might remember it's at LOC. So in Google, the search to find it again will be ["marketing research" site:loc.gov]. Or just ["marketing research" site:.gov] because this search (and I always test the search) puts the site I want on the first page of results, and also adds some other interesting stuff.

Fun, huh? I just wish I could calculate the odds of ever needing to find the site again -- or of succeeding when I try.