I spent a rainy afternoon at my home away from home recently. The New York Public Library’s Science, Industry, and Business branch is the tops, the bees knees, my fellow information fiends.
I always leave there feeling particularly accomplished, like my clients are SO lucky to have me on their side. Because of the amazing resources available at SIBL, I am able to support myself as an independent researcher. Seriously, get yourself a library card, kids. It can change your life!
On this visit, I gathered up many interesting reports, which I hope will inspire a posting or two here.
As I begin this blog, here are my small hopes for what I will do: amaze my coffee shop buddies with my dedication and productivity, offer up some thoughts as I sift, observe, and read and hopefully get a discussion going in the process. I’ll post documentations from my ‘nerd missions’ out on the town and look forward to your adds and slags.
I’m not sure what form and frequency this will take but I’m excited to start.
The blogs that I regularly read and comment upon are largely visual ones. We’ll see how that personal preference plays out here as I navel gaze upon the data of the marketing world and the culture from which it springs.
Born Curious 
Let me the first to congratulate you on your new site!
Can you tell a story about how the library was helpful to you or a client?
Thanks Slave!
I will give two quick examples to show the range of how I use SIBL….
#1
A close friend who has a contracting and custom woodworking business asked me to help him evaluate a business opportunity. His friend suggested they begin importing bedsets from Indonesia. The manufacturer had amazing facilities and very satisfied high-end hotelier clients throughout Asia. The friend had helped design and oversee the plant itself, so my help was needed to size up the size of the market for these type of products in the US, determine the competitive set and then find out as much as I could about their sales and marketing efforts. I should probably add here that I knew nothing about the furniture business prior to the project. Anyway, I spent an afternoon at SIBL and came away with projected sales and growth numbers, market share by sales channel, several trend reports on the home decorating sector, consumer attitudinal research, and dozens and dozens of great articles on the competitive set (which I identified via SIBL resources as well.) All of what I gathered being the most current data and projections available, from trusted industry evaluators, and here’s the kicker, absolutely free. I spent 2-3 hours at the library and I got more than enough material to create a solid marketing plan, worthy of scrutiny by any of my Fortune 500 clients. Small business owners should DEFINITELY take advantage of the piles and piles of information available. SIBL also has a fantastic help desk, staffed by library scientists who will help you navigate their (potentially) intimidating resources. You can literally walk up to them and say “I want to know everything that the top businesses in my field have been doing for the last 2 years. Where do I start?” And off you will go.
Example #2
Over the course of 3 months or so, I wrote a huge competitive review for the McDonald’s Happy Meal Team (yes, such a thing exists.) I collected thousands of examples of kids’ menu offerings, all of the promotional tie-ins that took place, and every piece of data I could find about sales numbers, the cost of those deals, US versus global efforts, how all this tied in with the larger brand umbrella, their web efforts, their charitable efforts – anything and everything these brands communicated about themselves to kids and their parents. I studied fast food providers, restaurants, consumer packaged goods that are aimed at kids, as well as several kid-centric media companies and properties. I also researched kids eating habits, trends in kid food, toys and entertainment. I looked at how retailers were attempting to respond to those marketplace changes.
I’d go to SIBL and say to myself “ok, today is Burger King day” and I did that over and over. Of course, I augmented my library visits with store checks, consumer interviews and I even went to the Toy Fair. But there is no way I would have been able to gather a fraction of the data I did without SIBL. Current in-market examples are easy to find. What happened 18 months ago, in China, not so easy. Searching focused databases of trade and industry journals, respected international research providers and the like made for the most thorough report possible. Yes, Google and Wikipedia are great, but they can’t begin to tackle a project like this. Not all sources are created equal and a lot of publicly available data is actually hard to track down, especially when one is trying to connect several dots across time and space.
I hope this helps. Please feel free to ask a specific question you might have about using the library. I’d be happy to offer my suggestions!