Library Guide
Entrepreneurship and Small Business
This guide will introduce you to some of the information tools that you can use in researching products, markets, and competitors, as well as resources that can help you in small business start-up and planning.
Find Books
Consult some of these materials for more information about how to write business plans, how to segment markets, etc.
Marymount Library Catalog
Search by "business planning", "marketing", "market research", "strategic planning" etc., and then click the "subject" button to browse book titles.
Watch a how-to video to learn the basics of searching the library catalog.
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Find Demographic and Statistical Information
Online Resources
FedStats
Gateway to statistics from over 100 federal agencies. Provides access to the full range of official statistical information produced by the Federal Government without having to know in advance which Federal agency produces which particular statistic.
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American FactFinder
Provides population, housing, economic, and geographic data compiled from various censuses and surveys. Get a Fact Sheet for a specific community, or get data on the American community as a whole (use left-hand menu options, for example, "people").
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Statistical Abstract of the United States
Standard summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. The 2010 statistical summary is available now. Also availble in print from the Library:
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California Statistical Abstract
Compiled data on social, economic, and physical aspects of the State, published by the California Dept of Finance.
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RAND California
Statistical tables and reports from RAND, one of the nation's premier think tanks. Use "California Statistics" to find data for a specific county, city, or zip code.
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Consumer Expenditure Survey
Consists of two surveys collected for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Census Bureau that provide information on the buying habits of American consumers, including data on their expenditures, income, and consumer-unit (families and single consumers) characteristics.
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Suggested Print Resources
Find Information on an Industry
Collecting information about and reporting on the U.S. economy is a big task. Organizing this task by creating a hierarchical classification for the incoming data is an essential part of tackling the job. NAICS is the industry classification system being used to do this job in the U.S. Experienced business analysts, journalists, and economists are all familiar with and use this system. The U.S. federal government agencies collect and publish industry data regularly.
One of the most efficient ways to search for data on a particular industry is to search by the NAICS industry code. Google does not offer this capability, but specialized search engines, like those below, do.
ProQuest Research Library
Search for industry specific articles by going to "Advanced Search" and then selecting the NAICS search option.
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Business & Company Resource
Provides company and industry profiles, financial information, full-text articles and investment reports. Users can search by various criteria, including company, industry or personal name, ticker symbol, geographic region, subject, and NAICS code.
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Business Source Elite
Search over 1,000 scholarly business, management, and economics journals. More than 10,000 substantial company profiles from Datamonitor are also included.
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Find Information on a Specific Company
To identify competitors and learn more about their business, refer to the Company Information Research Guide.
For small business research, you may also find it useful to use Google Maps or the Los Angeles Times Business Directory to identify competitors.
Other Research Needs
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