Fort Lauderdale, FL

My name is Eileen Fischlschweiger, and I’ve been the Fort Lauderdale PTRC Representative for seventeen years, having worked at the PTRC in the capacity of Patent and Trademark Librarian for nineteen years. I have been a librarian with the Broward County Library System for over 25 years. My undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Science in both Chemistry and Physics (double major). I also have a Master’s degree in Communications, a considerable amount of graduate level coursework in Education, and a second Master’s degree in Library Science.

The Broward County Main Library in Downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has housed the Fort Lauderdale PTRC since its designation on November 1st, 1984. Formerly a part of the Government Documents Department 1984 – 1996, it became a part of the Business, Law, and Government (BLG) Section November, 1996 – January 2010, and it is now a part of the Reference Section.

Continued Main Library Renovation Projects

The Broward County Main Library’s Wind Mitigation Project continues and the project is nearly complete. This has been a massive project, in which all the windows of the Main Library are being replaced with impact resistant windows that meet current hurricane standards, enabling the Main Library to withstand a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which rates hurricane strength as 1 to 5 according to the speed of sustained winds.

2013-2014 Highlights

• In May 2013, we had our annual National Inventors’ Month book display using various attractive posters to enhance the display’s appearance. This time we focused on patents and trademarks related to art materials, specifically, colored pencils from a major US manufacturer that has been in business producing them for a long time. This display was inspired by my finding the term “Chemi-Sealed” on one of my old colored pencils. It turned out that this is a live trademark, Reg. No. 0317526, used with Prismacolor® pencils, with a date of first use of December 12, 1933. Examples of patents found for the display are 2,105,310 (Agglutinant, issued January 11, 1938), 2,220,992 (Pencil and crayon rod, issued November 12, 1940), 1,854,905 (Pencil and method of making pencils, issued April 19, 1932), and 1,892,508 (Lead pencil and method of making the same, issued December 27, 1932).
• On Tuesday January 21, 2014, the Main Library had a soft opening for its new Creation Station, which is a makerspace and gadget lab. It is a community center which provides a gathering space for like-minded hobbyists to create and collaborate, and is equipped with the following tools and equipment:
• Two 3-D printers
• Four Macintosh computers
• Three iPad Air tablets
• Three Samsung Galaxy tablets
• Three Microsoft Surface tablets
• Leap Motion technology
More information can be found at http://webapps.broward.org/newsrelease/AdminDisplayMessages.aspx?intMessageId=5055 and http://www.broward.org/Library/CreationStation/Pages/Default.aspx.

• On Saturday February 15, 2014, the Inventors’ Society of South Florida (ISSF) had its annual inventor show, “Resources 2014” at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, which in addition to the exhibit featured 5 speakers. This year, the last event of the day of the events was the Shuuk Pit which was a competition similar to Shark Tank which was run by one of the speakers. More information can be found on the ISSF’s website at www.inventorssociety.net. As in prior years, the library had an outreach presence at this very popular show. Eileen and FDL librarian Tom Fischlschweiger had a table for the Broward County Main Library’s PTRC and FDL (Federal Depository Library). We had many handouts including materials provided by the PTRC Program and our own in house handouts recently revised for the event. These materials provided information about patents, trademarks, copyrights, the FDLP, and the Broward County Library system. Fifty-five exhibitors displayed this year, mostly inventors. As always, this was a very busy event. One hundred and seventy three people came to the library’s table and asked a variety of questions, which ran the entire gamut of complexity, ranging from the very simple to the very complex. Overall there were a total of 570 questions. Of those, 422 were related to intellectual property (mostly patents), 97 were related to Federal Depository information, and 51 were related to our library services. Our handouts are always very popular, and, in all, we passed out a total of approximately 348 handouts. Overall, we estimated that the event’s attendance throughout the day was approximately 500 people. In addition, there was media coverage, with a reporter and camera person walking the area interviewing inventors.