Resource of the Week: Hill Library’s BizToolKit
Resource of the Week: Hill Library’s BizToolKit
By Matt Lee, Business Information Specialist, James J. Hill Reference Library
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Editor’s note: The James J. Hill Reference Library, is a private non-profit business reference library, located in Saint Paul, MN. Established in 1921, its focus is on practical business information resources, and it’s considered to be one of the comprehensive business libraries in the U.S. We regularly monitor this library’s blog, as it is a valuable ongoing source of business research tips and resources. And that is how we met Matt Lee, business information specialist at Hill, who maintains the blog, along with other Hill librarians. They also offer a business-oriented Website of the Week (which you can receive via e-mail), and have developed a truly awesome resource called BizToolKit. We’ve asked Matt to give you a brief tour of the ToolKit.
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Every day, or so it seems, the Internet becomes a better place to find free business information. New sites continually emerge, content is added and updated, and publishers increasingly adopt an open access mentality. Unfortunately, sunk in with all that great and reputable data is erroneous, misguided, and sometimes self-serving content in the guise of good info. You could spend eight hours a day keeping up with it all, or you could turn to the folks who already do. That’s us, and the BizToolkit is the fruit of our labor.
The BizToolkit (http://www.biztoolkit.org) is a collection of the best free Web sites on various business research topics. It is created and maintained by the librarians of the James J. Hill Reference Library (http://www.jjhill.org) a nonprofit business library open to the public. It is our sole mission here at the Library to help small businesses incorporate trustworthy information into their business strategies.
Business information is all we do here at the Hill Library, and the sites we link to from the BizToolkit are the best business sources we can find online, and the ones we use.
Getting Into the BizToolkit
From the BizToolkit landing page (http://www.biztoolkit.org), click the “Free Access” link. You’ll be immediately directed to the BizToolkit home page, where you’ll see the two ways of getting to content within the site: by stage of business and by business topic.
Search by Stage of Business
Most business people operate within a limited time frame. Who doesn’t, right? But when it comes to business research, most folks only want to know what they have to know right then, at that specific moment. The Stage of Business organization presents these need-to-know topics in accordance with where a business is in its life-cycle — the five main stages being:
+ Exploring – for those just thinking about starting a business, to help figure out if it’s feasible.
+ Beginning – when an entrepreneur is ready to take the plunge, and create a plan and implement it.
+ Growing – to help small organizations get to the next level by expanding business or services.
+ Managing – to keep a well-run business well-run by managing operations, employees, and financials.
+ Maturing – for closing a successful business through sale, going public, or ownership transference.
Once an entrepreneur has selected the appropriate stage of business, BizToolkit will guide them through the top issues to consider at that point. For example, a business at the Beginning stage would surely want to consider some of the following tasks to make sure their launch is successful:
+ Create a business plan, and get help doing so with sample business plans and downloadable templates.
+ Learn more about your industry, with industry statistics and trend reports.
+ Learn more about your potential customers, with demographic research.
+ Research your competitors, and find ways to identify and learn more about companies in an industry or location.
+ Find funding, by learning more about various types of funding and finding actual sources for that funding online.
Each of these task areas will present the best free Web sites and online tools to help in completing that task. If we were to visit the “Learn more about your industry” section, for example, we’d find links to industry-specific economic census reports, a database of trend reports called the Special Issues Index, and an industry association search engine. All of these resources are great for industry data, and they’re all freely available online.
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Search by Business Topic
On the home page of the BizToolkit is an “I Want to Find” drop-down menu. This menu bypasses the Stage of Business organization and lists every topic covered in BizToolkit individually. Remember in the above example, when we navigated to the “Learn more about your industry” section through the Beginning stage? You can get to these same industry research sources directly by selecting “Industry Research” in the topic drop-down menu. If you’re looking for information on a particular topic, without regard to business life-cycle, use this drop-down menu.
So How Can I Use the Site?
Good question. You can use the BizToolkit to:
- identify the best business Web sites on various topics, and
- feel confident about using the data and information on those sites for your research and business.
To learn more about how to put some of the available data to use for your business, you might consider these silent videos:
+ Researching Your Customers with the BizToolkit (3:44)
+ Researching Your Industry with the BizToolkit (3:27)
A Quick Note About BizToolkit Pro Membership
For the most part, the BizToolkit is a free resource. From www.biztoolkit.org, just click the “Free Access” link to be immediately ushered into the site. However, there are additional research tools available to Pro members. A BizToolkit Pro membership costs $7.95 per month and includes access to several databases not freely available online, including the Business Plans Handbook (for sample business plans), the Encyclopedia of American Industries (for industry statistics and overviews), and the New Strategist Demographic E-Books (for detailed customer research). Several other benefits apply; see the Pro info page.
Finally
And if the BizToolkit only shows you one thing, let that one thing be our contact information. The Hill Library is open to the public and we’re always eager to help folks with business research projects – using both free online tools and our vast business reference collection. If you’re having a hard time finding the answer to a question, let us know. Give us a call at 877-700-4455 or send an email to info@jjhill.org.