College Park, MD

Jim Miller and Bob Kackley are still the main “patent folks” at College Park, though we try to get other people involved. Nevenka Zdravkovska and Nedelina Tchangalova are loyal PTDLA members. As in all libraries, there are increasing demands on staff time. We have gotten valuable assistance from our iSchool grad student Francy Stilwell, notably her setting up our new Patents & Trademarks guide at http://lib.guides.umd.edu/patent_tm . Our patent and trademark business continues to be mostly with students, but more patrons are coming in as the private sector recovers a bit. Online patent/TM reference continues to pick up. Jim Miller joined other PTDLA officers in a meeting with USPTO Director David Kappos in June 2010, and also took part in the PTDLP Roundtable in February 2011. The big change here at EPSL was the uniting of the Circulation and Information Desks, guided by our intrepid Head, Nevenka. We also have upgraded our popular ground floor study / instruction area to include a new projector. A long-term major change is our increasing move to online, aided by UMD Libraries’ new student technology fee; which our new Dean, Pat Steele, helped make happen. We have added Springer’s e-journal backfiles and 30,000 of their recent e-books. We were able to add Scopus without having to sacrifice Web of Science – making a good case that BOTH are essential for a major university collection.