In an Internet age, libraries still a good source for business data
Marc Tiar has an old-fashioned suggestion for Web-savvy businesspeople trolling the Internet for the information they need for a budget or marketing plan: Try the public library, too.
Along with traditional business reference publications, the Washoe County Library System has invested heavily in recent years in on-line databases, says Tiar, a technology services librarian at the downtown Reno branch. He pulls up, for instance, the Reference USA Database with its detailed information on about 12 million U.S. businesses. 
With a few keystrokes, Tiar brings up a listing of Reno-area businesses by industry — including the contact names and phone numbers prized by sales representatives.
The database — free to anyone who has a library card — is accessible only from the downtown library location. Most of the other database services in the library’s collection, however, are available to users from their office computer. Those on-line services range from CQ Researcher, with its in-depth report on hot issues in the news, to Today’s Science, which details developments in technology, science, health and medicine.
Businesspeople with research questions also can enlist the help of skilled reference librarians through the library system’s Web site (washoe.lib.nv.us)… other patrons search for copies of commonly used business forms or research the steps for preparation of a business plan. And still others use the business reference material to develop marketing plans. Some, for instance, rely on publications that detail demographic information by ZIP Codes.
“The electronic age has kept a lot of people in their office rather than coming in,” Tiar says. “This is under-used. People don’t think of this as a place for doing business research.”