Business Information 101

Joy Cichewicz

810-229-6571, x219

joy@brightonlibrary.info

Just so you’ll know:

· If it’s a subscription database it’s available from Brighton District Library’s website (http://brightonlibrary.info). Just click on “Find Articles” near the top of the page. If you are connecting from home you’ll be asked for your library card number before you will have access.

Personal Finance

· Money 101 (http://money.cnn.com/pf/101/) An interactive course on CNN’s site to lean how to manage money and investments.

· Motley Fool (http://www.fool.com/ ) Entertaining and informative site.

· Learn That Online Courses (http://www.learnthat.com/courses/financial/) – courses with exercise an worksheets on topics such as making ends meet, avoiding an audit, how to shop online.

· Yahoo Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com ) can look up current stocks and company news. Create a portfolio to track your own stocks.

Business Statistics and Economic Indicators

· Economic Indicators (http://www.economicindicators.gov/) - Regularly released national statistics such as gross domestic product, new residential construction, personal income and much more!

· NAICS Business Patterns (http://censtats.census.gov/cbpnaic/cbpnaic.shtml ) Data on the total number of establishments, employment and payroll for 1998-2001 by zip code, county, state, or metropolitan area.

· Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) (http://www.semcog.org/ ) – creates statistics such as community profiles, monthly population estimates, employment estimates, number of approved building permits, regional forecasts, nonresidential development, land use, manufactured housing, and traffic counts.

Business News

· General Business File ASAP (http://brightonlibrary.info/articles.html - library database) - Analyze company performance and activity, industry events and trends as well as the latest in management, economics and politics. Provides access to a combination of broker research reports, trade publications, newspapers, journals and company directory listings with full text and images available.

Business Startup

· How to Learn About an Industry or a Specific Company (http://www.virtualpet.com/industry/howto/search.htm) Steps and resources to research an industry or company for starting a company.

· Reference USA – Residential (http://brightonlibrary.info/articles.html ) - Primarily used for creating marketing lists. Contains median income of a particular household, names of the adults in a household, value of a households in the area, and latitude and longitude of a specific place.

· Michigan Start-up Information (http://michigan.gov/businessstartup/ )- A new resource, Michigan’s Online Business Startup Wizard, allows new business ventures to file their business entity and register for applicable state taxes on-line.

· Michigan Small Business & Technology Development Center (http://www.misbtdc.org/ ) – Provides quality counseling, training and market research at low-or no-cost. Great resource!

· Michigan Chambers of Commerce (http://www.michamber.com/) - Find Chamber of Commerce in your area.

· Michigan Guide to Starting a Business (http://medc.michigan.org/services/startups/GuideToStarting.pdf)

· Michigan Retailer’s Association (http://www.retailers.com/) - “A monthly gauge of key retail activity in Michigan." Also provides services such as merchant credit card services.

· Michigan Service Core Of Retired Executives (SCORE) (http://www.scoremichigan.org/) - provides free business counseling and offers low-cost workshops on a variety of business topics.

· Reference USA – Business (http://brightonlibrary.info/articles/index.html) - Detailed information on more than 12 million U.S. businesses, 102 million U.S. residents and 683,000 U.S. health care providers. Information updated monthly. Can download/print 25 records per search.

Use to find business info such as:

· address & phone

· fax number

· number of employees

· credit rating info

· annual income

· names of key employees

· Edgar info

· SIC and NAICS codes.

Can limit searches by:

· company name

· geography

· ticker symbol

· business size (money or income)

· SIC or NAICS codes

· government offices

· publicly owned vs privately owned

· yellow pages ad size

· headquarters vs branch

· Annual Reports (http://www.annualreports.com ) - find current annual reports of thousands of publicly-traded companies. Annual reports typically include: letter from the chairman (or CEO) to the shareholders; financial highlights; balance sheets; profit and loss statements; new business; year in review; projections; outstanding shares of stock and list of board members.

· Thomas Register (http://www.thomasregister.com/) - main purpose is to find manufacturing companies. Can also be used to find privately held manufacturing companies.

· Ward's Business Directory of U.S. Private and Public Companies – another source for finding information on privately-held companies.

International Trade

· International Trade Administration (http://www.trade.gov ) - Export trade information, assistance, forms and trade statistics

· U.S. Customs and Border Protection (http://cbp.gov/) – NAFTA info.

· World Chambers of Commerce (http://www.worldchambers.com/ ) – Find Chamber of Commerce in other countries. Many have information about starting a business in that country/city.

Investment Info

· BigCharts.com (http://bigcharts.com) – get current and historical stock quotes with interacting charts. Good for finding the original value of a stock on a certain date.

· Morningstar – find reports on mutual funds. Available at the reference desk

· Value Line – get stock reports and detailed information on particular stocks. Available at the reference desk, can have librarian log you in to web version. Only one login allowed at a time.