Firstly, let me put my hand up and say I’d forgotten this wee gem of a  service exists.

Secondly, let me put that right and do my bit to promote a bloody useful tool for any business.

Thirdly, let’s not fool ourselves that Google knows ‘everything’ and can deliver the real information you may be after.

Now, any organisation needs to find stuff out at times.

But often a search arrives at a dead end, an expensive journal or paper, or peters out with you being none-the-wiser.

Ta, da...dahh - who is that riding over the hill to our rescue?

Business information at your fingertips

Why, it’s Wellington City Libraries Business Information Specialist Marilyn Domney, (prosearch@wcc.govt.nz)

It’s a unit (or product in Council-speak) physically located at the Central Library, where anyone with a library card has:

1. An hour’s free training on the use of (extensive) research resources, and
2. Access to this information and knowledge that’s way deeper than that provided by an internet search engine

As Marilyn says, “I’m not going to tell you how to start or run a business, But I will tell you, if you need to find out more about a subject, go here, here, here and here.”

Three key business information resources

She has intimate (and shareable) knowledge about navigating your way through three key components of the Libraries business resources, Katalyst, Market Line and Lynda.com.

She’s also able to show library-card holder searchers how to end up at the doorstep of valuable journals and papers via the mygateway.info resources and be able to enter them without paying (legally like!).

The library has already paid for access to resources - and as ratepayers, Wellingtonians have proxy rights.

WREDA and the Chambers of Commerce often point business and would-be businesses her way, and among her better known ‘alumni’ was Rollo Wenlock who went on to establish and grow Wipster, a rapid review and approval platform for creative content.

Marilyn includes Twitter in her searches: “it can be useful sometimes, though you have to be really precise.”

One medical devices company looking to enter Britain needed to find the regulations they needed to abide by. Through Twitter, Marilyn found similar companies talking about the law changes that had occurred four months before and saved the NZ company a big headache.

Part of Marilyn’s training is teaching people the importance of, and how to search for tags and subject headings - something that is particularly important for academic articles and online databases.

The Libraries Press reader resource provides access to many of the the world’s newspapers, magazines and journals - which are also able to be read through a downloadable library app.

She says “as a librarian I always like to find an answer, like to be successful.”

Marilyn also likes to note the occasional victory.

“I’ve had people come back to me and say, you’re help was fantastic. We were able to employ a new person because of the information you helped us find.”