BEOnline began in 1996 as an experimental project of the Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT) of the Cataloging Directorate of the Library of Congress to explore means of access and bibliographic control for remote Internet resources of interest to the practice or study of entrepreneurship and small business.

Currently, data on the Internet resources included in the BEOnline guides is maintained in an inhouse database from which the approximately ninety BEOnline subject guides are dynamically generated.