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TMCNet: Library offers free business consultations

[August 18, 2010]

Library offers free business consultations

Aug 17, 2010 (Baltimore Messenger - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- What do they have in common? Pam Corkran opened a consignment shop in the Charles Village business district.

White Hall resident Dean Place was trying to land a job after 25 years in the wood products distribution business.

Marty Hyson wanted to fill the new Palisades of Towson apartment building with tenants.

Don Forney manages sales for a restoration company that serves Baltimore county and city.

The experience all four have shared is benefiting from a pilot program at the Towson Library called the Business Consultations Initiative.

The free service offers an hour of one-on-one training to business people on the use of databases, websites and print sources available through the library.

"I highly recommend it for anyone trying to break the ice in the Towson area or even Baltimore County," said Hyson. "It's a great resource. It offered us hundreds of thousand of contacts," he added, "and the driving force is that it was free." Indeed, some of the databases available at no cost through the Baltimore County Public Library website (bcpl.info) would otherwise cost hundreds of dollars.


Among the offerings are Standard & Poor's NetAdvanatge, a source of business and investment information; Reference USA, a list of 11 million company profiles including addresses, phone numbers, numbers of employees, sales volume and product lines; and Value Line Investment Survey Online, a resource offering information and advice on some 1,700 stocks.

It could be said Towson Library launched the service because of a question Corkran asked back in April.

Corkran, who wanted to open a clothing consignment shop called Too Good to be Thru, in the 2100 block of North Charles Street, had taken a class at the state-run Small Business Development Center at Towson University, and came to the library asking if there were resources to help write a business plan.

"She was shocked when she realized we had database and information that was free," said Towson Library branch manager Jennifer Haire.

That led to the branch contacting the center at TU, as well as the Baltimore County Chamber of Commerce's Small Business Resource Center. Both were unaware what the library had to offer, but immediately saw the worth to clients.

Companies can make appointments that usually involve one librarian and one customer, though the sessions may include several customers -- Hyson came with two members of his sales team.

Like most customers who have used the service to date, Hyson stumbled upon it. He visited the library looking for resources to enable the sales team to establish relationships with potential tenants: hospitals, colleges, county government, corporate housing and the like.

When he told librarian Mercedes Mendoza what he needed, she told him about the consultation service and offered to bring him in for training.

"We were extremely pleased," he said. "We were able to find the names of principals and their titles and addresses.

"The programs had so many bells and whistles you could customize your search, and they gave us a personal log-in so we didn't have to be at the library to perform the search." Place, who was unemployed until he found a job late last month with the help of the library service, said he was able to size up companies with which he might be interviewing, and learn about their competitors.

"It was very helpful," he said.

The four librarians involved in the training have rated the new service "very highly in terms of apparent customer satisfaction and a valuable use of time all around," Haire said.

Invariably, "the reaction has been extremely positive," said Mendoza.

Don Forney's company, Puroclean, which services Baltimore city and county clients whose properties have been damaged caused by water, fire or mold, was looking for categories of businesses to market to, he said.

His training session took place over the phone.

"I was very happy with it," he said. "The databases offered a lot of variation. We're still tweaking the process." Corkran said she would recommend the service to anybody, because, "It's a definite plus in writing a business plan." Not many business people know about the service at his point, Haire said, noting it is only available at her branch. She's not sure if the pilot program will be incorporated into the permanent range of services the branch offers.

"It's a matter of getting the word out. We're watching to see how it grows," she said.

For information on the Business Consultations Initiative at Towson Library, call the branch at 410-887-6166, and press No. 4 for the information desk.

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