Building & Running a Successful Research Business

Mary Ellen Bates is the owner of Bates Information Services, now in its second decade of operation. She provides business research to business professionals and backup research services to corporate librarians. She also conducts workshops and seminars for information professionals. Prior to starting her own business in 1991, she worked in corporate and law libraries for 15 years. She received her masters in Library and Information Science from the University of California, Berkeley and has been an online researcher since the late 1970s. She is the author o five other books: Super Searchers Cover the World (Information Today, Inc., 2001), Mining For Gold on the Internet (Mc Graw-Hill, 200), Researching Online For Dummies, 2nd edition, co-authored with Reva Basch (Hungry Minds, 2000), Super Searchers Do Business (Information Today, Inc., 1999), and The Online Desk book (Information Today, Inc., 1996). She writes for EContent, ONLINE, and Searcher, and is the contributing editor of The Information Advisor. She is a frequent international speaker, and has given presentations at information industry conferences around the world. The first two-time president of the Association of Independent Information Professionals, she is also active in the Special Libraries Association and the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals. Mary Ellen received AIIP's first annual Sue Rugge Memorial Award, created to recognize an AIIP member who, through mentoring, has significantly helped others establish their businesses. She also received the 2002 Professional Award from the Special Libraries Association, and was named member of the year by the Communications Division and the Washington, DC, Chapter of SLA. In her spare time, Mary Ellen is a back-of-the -pack marathon runner. She lives in Washington, DC, with her companion and two dogs. She can be contacted at [email protected] or www.BatesInfo.com.

Reva Basch, executive editor of the Super Searcher book series, has written four books of her own: Researching Online For Dummies (Hungry Minds, 2nd edition with Mary Ellen Bates), Secrets of the Super Net Searchers (Information Today, Inc.,1996), Secrets of the Super Searchers (Information today, Inc.,1993), and Electronic Information Delivery: Evaluating Quality and Value (Gower, 1995), She has edited and contributed chapters, introductions, and interviews to several books about the Internet and online information retrieval. She was the subject of a profile in WIRED magazine, which called her "the ultimate intelligent agent." Prior to starting her own business in 1986, Reva was Vice President and Director of Research at Information on Demand, a pioneering independent research company. She has designed front-end software for major online services, written and consulted on technical, marketing, and training issues for both online services and database producers, and published extensively in information industry journals. She has keynoted at international conferences in Australia, Scandinavia, Europe, and the United Kingdom as well as North America. Reva is Past-President (1991-1992) of the Association of Independent Information Professionals. She has a degree in English Literature, summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Masters degree in Library Science from the University of California in Berkeley,. She began her career as a corporate librarian, ran her own independent research business for 10 years, and has been online since the mid-1970s . She lives on the remote northern California coast with her husband, cats, and satellite access to the Internet.