Business and Finances

 This interview airs beginning September 14.
Carl Silver’s life is an amazing story.  Born of humble parents, his business acumen, his ability to negotiate, and his reputation for integrity and fairness have served him well as a successful entrepreneur and developer.  Debby Klein visits him to talk about his accomplishments and the impact they have had on our community on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.

An observation worth noting: I have recently been approached by a growing number of people wanting to build a web site for their business. This would have been a much more daunting process even a few years ago.  However the Web has evolved to meet these needs more easily.  There now exist many online storefronts through which small businesses can be run. Though I am unable to recommend one service over another, either through direct experience or secondary knowledge, here are a few of the more popular selections that can help anyone get started. 

Manage your investments with information from our newest online database, Value Line - Expanded Library Edition.  All you need is a CRRL library card and access to the internet from anywhere in the world! 

Value Line includes a weekly online presentation of their Investment Survey, full-page reports with analyst commentaries, Timeliness™, Safety™ , and Technical™ ranks on over 3,500 large, small, and mid cap size companies, information and rankings on an additional 4,500 companies and three-to-five year projections of key financial measures, and concise, objective commentary on current operations and future prospects.

Need more info?  Try the Morningstar Investment Research Center, another online database of stock and mutual fund research, data, and analysis.  You can even track your own portfolio! 

Need a tutorial?  Our librarians can give you a half hour demonstration and answer your questions through our Training on Demand service.  Call the Reference Desk at your branch to book your librarian. 

For free online help putting a resume together, viewing job listings, or chatting with a career specialist, have a look at Tutor.com. 

Maintaining your privacy online is a tricky matter, as I’m sure you know. And though you’re using a firewall as well as anti-spyware software, and you’ve password-protected your computer, that does almost nothing to keep your information secure online. Here are some ideas to help keep you to yourself when surfing the Web. For your convenience, I’ve divided the information into basic and advanced sections.

On Wednesday, April 29, at 4pm Eastern Time, spend an hour discovering how to use the Morningstar Investment Research Center to search for stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs.

Sign up online for a virtual tour - a service provided to you by the Central Rappahannock Regional
Library. You can conveniently access the training session from any location with a phone and Internet connection.

We were recently interviewed for possible inclusion in a book about word-of-mouth-marketing.  The authors are intrigued with how we market our library services and resources not just to our patrons, but also to our funding organizations, other libraries, and other organizations.  For example, staff have used free software programs to create a video entitled "Who Needs the Public Library?," which you can view on YouTube in our crrlvideo "channel."