 Welcome to a short training video on Cobra, the Complete Business Reference Advisor. By the end of this video you should be more aware of the sort of information Cobra holds and how useful it is for people starting up a business. So first we will look at how we access Cobra. This is the webpage you will come to when first logging into a public computer at your local West Sussex Library. In the top left is the title for A to Z of Electronic Resources. You would click on this of the arrow shows. Then we just need to scroll down to C and below C you should see the Clubs & Societies and you should find Cobra. The two asterisks before the word Cobra mean they can only be accessed at a library and not from home. Go ahead and click on Cobra. Here is the first page of Cobra. From here we can browse the index, search the entire website or we can go ahead and just view the business opportunity profiles, the business information fact sheets or even the sources of business information. But what does this mean in a practical sense? Imagine you have come into the library wanting information on how to start up a hairdressing salon. Cobra has an incredible amount of information that can help you, but how can you get it? First search using either the index or the search box. In this video we will use the Cobra index. Type the phrase you want to look for and press enter as this appeared on the screen. This will bring up the list of all information relating to hairdressing including the BOPs, which are the business opportunity profiles, the MINI BOPs, the business information fact sheets and market synopses. MINI BOPs do not hold as much information as BOPs and as you can see are about more specific businesses or ventures such as children's hairdresser or hair extension specialist. The business information fact sheets focus on a particular topic or task you want to accomplish such as writing a business plan. The market synopses are general overviews on how that particular sector is doing in the UK and right at the bottom you can see there is one for hair and beauty. Well those information will be very valuable to you if you were starting up this business. The most useful at the moment and digestible item to use is the BOP the business opportunity profile. So we would click on the one most relevant which is hairdressing salon which is expanding now. These business opportunity profiles hold a huge amount of information which are put into some main categories. There is an introduction, the what qualifications and skills are required, what are the key market issues and trends what are the main trading issues and this will be things like professional registration, business rates, licensing and even rough guides to the costs of equipment and furniture you will need. It will then also talk about legislation and give you further information. From here you can print the whole profile or save it as a PDF and that can be done with this bit expanding now in the top right. And if you did save it as a PDF you could read it at home at your leisure. So to conclude, Cobra is a huge collection of information useful for anyone running or starting up a business but also maybe business students at school or university. For specific business help e.g. hairdressing, bookshop, gym etc. use the business opportunity profiles or BOPs. For information either general or specific use the fact sheets and for more business help you can use the help and support tab which gives advice on the groups available to you.