We love to know everything business in St Albans and the surrounding areas
Big thanks to Ruth Louise Randall for sharing this with the group:
**Hertfordshire Business Library* Long Post Alert!
A few people asked me about the Business Library yesterday after my #SAB magnet post. I’m still discovering this resource myself, but I’ll share what I’ve found out so far.
It’s basically upstairs in the Welwyn Garden City Library, and they have several databases and services. If it’s an online database they’ll set you up on it at one of their PCs and you get an hour free, you can also take a memory stick and download a certain amount of information, I’m doing that today so I’ll let you know.
After the free hour you can continue to use the database paying hourly to stay online (£2.40 per hour). It includes:
COBRA- Business Reference Advisor, information on starting or running and managing a small business.
MyIncubator- Online Community for SMEs with free expert advice.
FAME- Detailed reports on all Ltd Co in UK, contact details, business activity, number of employees (I’m using this one to build a database, very easy to search by location or industry type).
Keynote- Over 1000 market research reports from Datamonitor covering 30 major UK industry sectors.
Marketline- Global market research reports covering all major industry sectors.
Various others like British Standards Online (not downloadable) and also Dun and Bradstreet Business directories.
There are always staff to help, but if you want one of the business advisors give them a call first as they aren’t always there.
It’s open 9am-7pm all week, 9-4 on Saturday and 1-5 on Sunday.
There are also loads of spaces to plug in your laptop and work using their free wifi. I think this will be my office for 2 weeks when my new kitchen is being put in!
Sue I hope that’s useful. (very useful, thanks, Ruth!)