In order to search like a librarian, you'll need to explore more authoritative resources, some which are specialty sources and authoritative in their own right, and some of which require a fee or subscription for access.  This is a tough fact for some to accept considering they think everything is or should be available for free on the Internet.

When it comes to U.S. sources of trade data, there are thousands of sources available, some better than others, some free and some proprietary and not free.  U.S. trade data can be found at dataweb.usitc.gov. This is a free source from the U.S. International Trade Commission, part of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce.  If looking for product import and export matters, one has to become familiar with databases and coding for international trade.  Here are a few of the coding systems:

* Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) a.k.a."Harmonized code". This is the standard product coding system for International trade.  There are over 5,000 commodity groups.

* Standard International Trade Classification (SITC)

* Standard Industrial Classification (SIC).  The more current SIC-like code is North American Industrial Classification Systems (NAICS), the result of cooperation amongst Canada, United States and Mexico.  The NAICS code is a six-digit code which identifies industries and establishments, including many more which were not defined in the earlier SIC code system. Despite the more far-reaching and detailed NAICS code structure, some businesspeople still rely on SIC codes for classification. 

The Federation of International Trade Associations (www.fita.org) features over 8,000 import/export-related trade resources.  Sites like www.statpub..com which covers worldwide agriculture products, www.emerging-markets.com which covers market research service specializing in power, energy, telecoms, and www.prsgroup.com - country reports that monitor risks to international business. 

A neat and speedy people search engine - http://pipl.com/ - try it out.  Pipl's query-engine will help you find deep web pages that cannot be found on regular search engines like Google and Yahoo.   And if you want to find out how old the people are that you're searching from Pipl or can't remember the birthday of a friend or someone you want to know more about, log onto  www.birthdatabase.com.  Enjoy.