Madison, WI

Wendt Commons Library serves the UW College of Engineering, Computer Science, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, and Statistics. The library has been a PTDL/PTRC since 1976.

The PTRC representative is Nancy Spitzer. Jody Hoesly, Assistant Director for Information Services, also specializes in patent and trademark information. We are excited that our colleague, Laura Schmidli, is now taking on more patent reference services and will be attending seminar this year. Laura is the Instruction and Information Services Librarian for Wendt.

Nancy taught patents searching in undergraduate and graduate classes in Engineering Mechanics and Astronautics, and Mechanical Engineering senior design. Other ME senior design classes are making good use of the online patents modules designed by Jody last academic year. Nancy once again partnered with a business faculty member in a class on Technology Entrepreneurship with two sessions on patent and trademark searching, with Laura assisting with student hands-on searching. Laura led numerous library sessions for Engineering Professional Development classes that included a patent searching component.

Over the past year Wendt Library staff have faced challenges to personnel and library spaces. The staff have been depleted due to budget cuts to the University System. In addition, we have been under tight deadlines to clear print and microform collections from two floors of the library for repurposing as instructional spaces and a new makerspace for the College of Engineering. This year-long process has meant that much of the patents collection is moving to retrievable off-site storage. We are pleased to find new library homes for our large US patent microfilm collection with the vital assistance of the PTRC Program Office.