 You may have a great idea for a new business, but don't have any idea how to get started. The Portland Public Library held a series of workshops designed to help small business owners learn about the many resources the library has to help them. Tom talked with Sonia Durney, the leader of the library's business and government team, about the program. I'm here with Sonia Durney, the leader of the business and government team for the library. And this week the library is holding a series of presentations for small businesses. Can you tell us why the library is doing this and what it's all about? Sure, we basically have two main goals. We're trying to promote resources available here at the library for small businesses or people looking to start small businesses. And we're also forming relationships with other organizations in the community that help small businesses. For instance, today we have Josh Saunders here from the Small Business Development Center, who's going to discuss different ways to finance your startups. I'm here with Josh Saunders, the certified business counselor for the Small Business Development Center. And he's doing the presentation today for this series of discussions and presentations. What is your presentation going to be about today? My presentation today is about various funding sources for small businesses and entrepreneurs to help start and grow their businesses. What kind of resources do you provide generally for small businesses? The main Small Business Development Center is focused on helping small businesses and entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses throughout the state of Maine. The main resource that we provide to them is business counseling services, which are at no cost to the client. Our funding comes mainly from the Small Business Administration on the federal side and the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development on the state side. We also do workshops both in person and online. How important is it for organizations like libraries like this one to offer local business owners this kind of opportunity to meet with you and have a presentation like this? Well, we really appreciate the fact that Sonia and the Portland Public Library are working with us because one of our missions is to make sure that people are aware of the services that we provide. Many small businesses aren't aware that they can get free counseling and those that do don't really understand what they might be getting. So the opportunity to meet small businesses, entrepreneurs, and the public in general is great for us in order to make sure that they know about the services. How involved has the Small Business Development Center been with the library and its efforts to reach small businesses? I think we've really become a lot more involved since Sonia came on and I've only been here since, or I've only been with the Maine Small Business Development Center since August of 2011. So I don't have a lot of basis for comparison, but Sonia has really made some outreach efforts not just to the Maine Small Business Development Center but also to score and other agencies that are out there working with small businesses. Do you know the genesis of why the library should be a resource for small businesses? Why target that in particular? Well, basically our goal or our mission is to support the community. So if local small businesses prosper, the community prospers and the library does well. It's a very symbiotic relationship. And your title is the leader of a team. So what does that team consist of? Sure, well here at the library we've been broken down in the past year into various teams. There's a cultural team, there's the city of readers which deals with the e-books and readers advisory. So I'm the leader of the business and government team, so I coordinate the government documents. I'm doing outreach to the local business community. I'm going to do collection development in that area. Have you been in contact with a lot of businesses already that have taken advantage of this and how has it helped them? We have. We've really been making an effort to get out and talk to people in the community. We went to the business expo two weeks ago here in Portland and made a lot of great connections. And people were surprised when they learned about some of the things we have here to offer. And since then I've had emails and a few calls from people wanting to learn more about our resources and further find out how to use them. It's great that you're offering an actual series of presentations people come to on their lunch hour when it's convenient. What other resources besides books or periodicals that you offer here at the library? Sure, we have subscriptions to many online databases. We have ReferenceUSA which is an online directory, Business Source Complete which is online SWOT analysis, industry profiles, different business information that anyone can use right from home on their desktop. If there's somebody who wants to get more information about what you offer, what would they do? How can they contact you? Is there a website, part of the website for the library that they can go to? Sure. They can either come to the library. We're downstairs on the lower level at the information desk or they can call. My phone number is on all the brochures. They can call me personally or the reference desk. Or also they can go to PortlandLibrary.com. On the right hand side of the website we have all of our various research areas and there's a tab for business research.