It has been a busy year at the Akron, OH PTRC this last year.
We hosted representatives from the USPTO twice in the last year. In March of last year, Alford Kindred from the Detroit regional USPTO office did 2 programs at our library, one geared toward patent attorneys in the afternoon and one geared toward inventors in the evening. Last month, James O. Wilson from the Detroit Regional USPTO office spoke to our local inventors’ club that meets here at our library. Cheers and thanks to our regional USPTO office, especially Denise Sylvester who arranged these programs!
Our IP programs continue to be well attended. We teach 2 monthly programs…Introduction to Patents and Patent Searching and a basic class on IP (Introduction to Intellectual Property). We also continue to do a quarterly program called Ask a Patent Attorney where people can sign up for a one on one Q & A session with a registered patent attorney. This is very popular and always fills up in advance! We also partner with a local business man and created the Akron Inventors Club 3 years ago, featuring monthly speakers speaking on some aspect of inventing. This has been pretty successful too.
Our department, the Science & Technology Division hired a new PSA, Tracy Pickett last year. At our library we have both Librarians and PSAs (public service assistants) on desk answering reference questions together. Greta Ramey, a PSA in our Division created a lovely display honoring women inventors in February this year. Our library hired a new Microbusiness Specialist, Tracy Williams. This person helps people and guides them to resources in the area hoping to form and/0r grow a small business. We continue to have a great working relationship with our local SCORE office downtown as we help promote each other’ s programs. This has actually increased our program attendance!
Our patent librarians are Stefanie Jolliff, Michele McNeal and myself. Stephanie and I will be attending conference this year and are looking forward to seeing you all!
