Oct: Patent Searching

Dates: October 1-28, 2013
Credits: 1.5 CEUs
Price: $175

    

The corpus of patents constitutes one of the largest organized repositories of technical information in the world. The value of searching for these documents is not limited to inventors; information from patents is also used by historians, genealogists, entrepreneurs, attorneys, and engineers. Whether serving public or academic communities, patent searching is a skill to include in any librarian’s repertoire. As a primer for librarians, students in this course will learn the anatomy of a patent and how patents are organized. A variety of search strategies will be discussed, and several freely available databases will be consulted. Guidelines for avoiding "unauthorized practice of law," a concern often inhibiting librarians from providing effective services to their users, will also be provided.
Download the course outline.

Martin Wallace is a Science & Engineering Librarian at the University of Maine, Orono, and serves as Maine’s only representative to the Patent and Trademark Resource Center (PTRC), a program administered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He is serving his third term as secretary of the Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association (PTRCA). Martin received his MLIS from the University of North Texas in 2005 and is currently pursuing an MS in Information Systems. Website, Interview with Martin Wallace