Small business support from the Library Part Three – Business e-books, digital magazines, and downloadable audiobooks

Charlotte Mecklenburg Library has business resources available in digital formats to support you and your business.  This is the third in a series of three blogs about the Library’s digital business resources.

Part One: Small business support from the Library - Resources

Part Two: Find business materials and programs in our catalog

Are you planning to start a new business?  Are you a manager that wants to improve your communication skills?  Or do you just want to figure out how to run your online meetings more efficiently?  Each month Charlotte Mecklenburg Library adds new e-books, digital magazines, and downloadable audiobooks titles related to starting your own business, managing, and leading employees, marketing your business, investing, and more.  Do you know how to find them? 

OverDrive/Libby

OverDrive is a collection of e-books, magazines, and audiobooks on a wide variety of subjects and genres.  This is where to go to find the New York Times bestsellers or other popular materials.  OverDrive most closely mimics a traditional library in that you can check out items and place a hold.  Read about Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s OverDrive collection and how to get started here.  Libby is OverDrive's app. 

If you are looking for a specific title, you can use the search feature by clicking the magnifying glass in the top right corner of every page.  If you want to see all the business books in one place, check out our Business room in OverDrive.  Click on “Business” to open the page.

The Business room is organized with curated subject collections to help you discover e-books and audiobooks.  Choose from topics such as “Just added,” “Stay Well and Work from Home,” “Women in Business,” “Marketing,” or “Leadership Lessons.”  New collections and books are added monthly. 

You can also browse the entire collection by subject.  Click “Subjects” from any page and then narrow your focus by clicking on business.  Within business you can filter even more by selecting a subject heading on the left side of the page.

   

Business Magazines in OverDrive

Charlotte Mecklenburg Library recently added digital magazines to OverDrive.  Read about it here.  The Library has many popular business and finance magazines available on OverDrive.  Some of the most popular include: The Economist, Apple Magazine, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Fast Company, and Entrepreneur Magazine.  To find magazines in OverDrive, click on “Magazines” in the navigation bar.  Scroll to find the “Business and Finance” collection.

hoopla

hoopla allows library customers to instantly borrow e-books, comics, audiobooks, music, movies, and television —no holds, and no waiting!  Learn more about hoopla’s collection and how to get started here.

After signing into hoopla, you can search by keyword, title, author, or format.  The search box is in the middle top of the screen.  If you know the title, type it in the search box.  Hoopla makes browsing easy.  To the left of the search box is the Browse feature.   Click the down arrow beside Browse to expand the menu.  Click on the type of media you are looking for: audiobook, movies, music, comics, e-books, or television.  Click on “e-book”.  The e-books page displays the most popular e-books being used by hoopla customers.  Click on categories to find business books.

The top e-book categories will be shown and then all categories.  Categories are in alphabetical order.  Think of categories like subjects or topics of interest.  Click on the category “Business & Economics.” 

The Business and Economics page will display more subjects or topics of interest to narrow down your search.  Or keep scrolling for the most popular books in this category.  You can also use the filters on the side to narrow your search by release date, date added, and language.

Gale e-books

Gale e-books offers a collection of specialized e-books on a variety of topics.  What’s really special about Gale e-books is that it contains all 50 volumes of the Business Plans Handbook.  The Business Plans Handbook contains actual business plans compiled by, and aimed at, entrepreneurs seeking funding for small businesses.  Samples plans are taken from businesses in the manufacturing, retail, and service industries and serve as examples of how to approach, structure, and compose business plans.  You can find our Gale e-books resource on the Library’s Resource page.  After accessing Gale e-books, click “Business” under “Browse Collections.”  Click on the Business Plans Handbook cover to access the 50 volumes.

Access all the Library’s resources for free with your library card.  Don’t have one?  Sign up here!  If you need more help with the resources covered in this blog, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library staff are available to help by email, chat, and phone. 

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 This blog was written by Amy Richard, digital collections coordinator at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library