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Business
In these difficult economic times, any small business would like to make itself more successful and profitable. One such way is by using competitive intelligence. Competitive intelligence involves looking at your business in relation to its competitors, industry, and the general environment in order to make better informed decisions. While competitive intelligence is most commonly used by Fortune 500 companies, it is equally beneficial for small businesses. Small business owners may think that they cannot afford competitive intelligence; however, this is not true. Any small business owner can perform some basic, beneficial research using freely available Cleveland Public Library (CPL) resources.
To stem the rising tide of housing and foreclosure issues in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, Cleveland Public Library and community organizations are making important information and emergency resources available to Northeast Ohio residents.
Lax implementation of regulations led to the proliferation of predatory lending practices, with the unfortunate result of Cuyahoga County being named among regions with the highest rate of foreclosure nationwide.
Banking is one of Cleveland's most important industries. We've all read news headlines describing its trials and tribulations. The Cleveland Public Library's Business Department has an impressive collection of resources on this industry, a few of these are described below.
The Business Department has sources for bank ratings, TheStreet.Com Ratings Guide to Banks and Thrifts (formerly Weiss Ratings), and LACE Financial Corporation's LACE Quarterly Financial Institution Ratings. The first is a quarterly and gives letter grades from A+ to F. It analyzes U.S. commercial banks, savings banks, and savings and loans. One valuable piece of information the guide provides is total home mortgages as a percentage of total assets.
Before there were Ford Model T’s on the road or American Airways in the sky, railroads carried passengers from coast to coast. Cleveland Public Library has an amazing collection of resources on railroads, including but not limited to: books and periodicals on the history of railroad companies and unions, annual reports, trade magazines, and photographs.
Cleveland has some interesting railroad connections. In 1910, four of the seven large Ohio railroad systems had terminals in Cleveland. These four systems were: Baltimore and Ohio, Erie, Pennsylvania, and New York Central. According to an estimate based on the U.S. Census of 1910 (Table 1) there were approximately 788 conductors employed in Cleveland in 1915.
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In 1917, the Federal Trade Commission hosted a conference addressing how the high cost of food and fuel was affecting our nation’s citizenry. In fact, all throughout our history governments and policy institutes have sought out ways to combat rising energy costs and its impact on personal transportation.* On a macro level governments have had limited success in guiding energy costs. Fortunately, the choices we make as individuals can have an immediate effect on our pocketbooks.
With the current price of energy in mind we are forced to take a closer look at which form of transportation we choose for our daily travels. To make an informed decision regarding personal transportation we owe it to ourselves to consider three factors: cost, time, and convenience. The Cleveland Public Library has at its disposal a variety of resources that may make your decision easier, or at the very least easier to defend when arguing over household expenses with your loved ones.
You may have noticed that many recent articles about the economy include sentences that begin or end with "according to the Conference Board." If you type that phrase into Google, you'll have 24 million hits. So, what is the Conference Board?
It is a global, independent research organization working for the public interest. It produces research, makes forecasts, assesses trends, convenes conferences, and publishes information and analysis. It regularly publishes Leading Economic Indicators, Consumer Confidence Indicators, and reports on corporate governance, business ethics, executive compensation, human resource issues, worklife balance issues, and other trends affecting business and labor.
Often we receive reference questions that begin with “What is the value of …” The answer can be easily determined when it concerns a commonly traded commodity, financial instrument, or product. These types of questions become much more problematic when we are asked to estimate the worth of artifacts that have never been sold on the open market. In these instances we are forced to come up with creative solutions to the unanswerable.
Today we were asked, “What is the value (in US dollars) of the Liberty Bell?” Clearly, the Liberty Bell is a priceless piece of American history that is virtually impossible to value monetarily. In an attempt to leave no reference question unanswered we chose to value the Liberty Bell using current scrap and precious metal prices. The prices we used were those quoted in the daily publication American Metal Market (AMM, volume 116, number 20-4). Here are the figures we came up with:
You may already be familiar with stock quote services like Yahoo! Finance and bigcharts.com. But what do you do if your stock isn’t listed on either of them? Using our books and Premium online sources, you can track mergers, name changes, and find quotes dating back to 1851. Contact the Business, Economics and Labor Department at 216-623-2927, at business@cpl.org, or visit us on the second floor of the Stokes wing.
