The Entrepreneur's Information Sourcebook: Charting the Path to Small Business Success

This guide offers invaluable assistance to those who wish to start or have already embarked upon a small business enterprise. Utilizing a step-by-step approach, it takes users through a process of planning, establishing, growing, maintaining, and even exiting a small business. For each step, the book offers dozens of the best information sources in print and on the Web, putting vital business information at your fingertips. This is a must-purchase for any library that serves entrepreneurs or future entrepreneurs. In fact, multiple copies may be in demand―for the reference desk and the circulating collection. In addition, it is a valuable guide for collection development.

Every year hundreds of thousands of new small businesses open. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Statistics and Research Center, small businesses in the United States, represent more than 99% of all employer firms and employ 51% of all private workers. According to the Small Business Administration, nearly 2/3 of college students say they intend to be entrepreneurs at some point in their careers. Nevertheless, business schools and textbooks offer little in the way of guidance for future entrepreneurs. Beyond contacting the SBA, most people are at a loss to find the current and accurate information they need to start and manage a small business.

This guide offers invaluable assistance to those who wish to start or have already embarked upon a small business enterprise. With a step-by-step approach, it takes users through a process of planning, establishing, growing, maintaining, and even exiting a small business. By identifying and describing hundreds of the best information sources in print and on the Web for each step of the business building process, it puts information vital to business success at your fingertips, enabling you to locate and use data from a wide range of resources. Chapters cover: Are You an Entrepreneur? Gathering Information and Statistics; Start Up; Your Business Plan; The Ups and Downs of Franchising; Raising Capital; Marketing and Advertising; Management; Personnel/Human Resources; Legal/Taxes; Working with the Government; Competitive Analysis; Growing Your Business and Moving On. In addition, there is a glossary of small business terms; and a detailed index concludes the guide. A first (and last) stop for any small business owner or would-be entrepreneur, this is a handy ready reference for librarians, and an essential collection development tool.

Susan C. Awe is Associate Professor and Director of Parish Memorial Library, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. A frequent contributor to such professional publications as Library Journal and Booklist/Reference Books Bulletin, and regular reviewer for American Reference Books Annual. She also edited the ARBA Guide to Subject Encyclopedias and Dictionaries, 2d ed. (Libraries Unlimited, 1997), contributed the Business and Careers chapter to Reference Sources for Small and Medium-sized Libraries (1999), and the Current Events chapter to Topical Reference Books (1991).