2012 has been both a year of change and a year of business as usual for us here at the Akron Summit County Public Library, Science and Technology Department. First, we got a new supervisor in Monique Mason in September. Monique replaced Valerie Sherman when Valerie was promoted to the Collection Development Department. We are very happy for Monique and welcome her as our new supervisor. We are currently rearranging our Main Library, combining departments etc. Fortunately, the Science and Technology Department has remained intact although we have absorbed some interesting subjects into our collection (supernatural, witchcraft, UFOs, philosophy and architecture to name a few).
The Patent and Trademark information continues to be located in the Science and Technology Department. Our patent team currently is Monique Mason and Curtis Bower. Previous patent team member, Janice Radl, assumed new duties several months ago. We have two new librarians, Kelli Nikola and Michele McNeal and Barb Leden a Public Service Assistant who joined our staff this year. Michelle will be attending conference this year for her first time!
We continue to teach our “Introduction to Online Patent Searching” and “Introduction to Intellectual Property” classes for our public. We also worked with a local patent attorney, Dominic Frisina as he and his partner Patricia Smith presented a series of workshops, each on a different topic related to inventing and intellectual property. We have also continued our outreach to our local inventor groups by attending their meetings and seeing what we both can do for each other.