The  Scottish Business Information Service ( http://www.scotbis.com/) is a national information service for Scottish businesses based on the resources  held at the National Library of Scotland. SCOTBIS provides users with a free enquiry service and also offers fee-based research and other charged services. Further information of their services is available on their web site and details of their charges are at http://www.scotbis.com/index.cfm?section_id=01.05. The Web Resources section lists useful sites and key starting points for business including market research, statistics, company information and starting a business. Some of the information  concentrates on Scottish markets and companies but most of the information is of value and interest to businesses based elsewhere.

As well as browsing through the list of resources you can search the site using keywords and limit your search to title, industry or country/region. There is also an option to restrict your search to specific databases, for example companies, market research reports.

The What’s New section lists the latest resources added to the listings and databases. Although there are RSS feed icons on some of the What’s New pages they do not seem to be working at the moment. Apart from this glitch SCOTBIS is an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to search for and purchase business information and for reliable, good quality business resources.