Rochester, NY

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County
Submitted by: Kate Meddaugh

The Carlson Center for Intellectual Property is housed in the Business Insight Center at the Central Library of Rochester, New York and Monroe County.
Recently, Melissa Cobo became Full-Time, which brings our FTE to a whopping 3! At times this is very challenging. However, our model of librarianship is highly different than your traditional Reference Desk. We are a Research Division. We still have a reference desk, but usually no one is staffing it because we are either out in the community talking about our services, or are working with a client. We are by appointment only (though we do take walk-ins if we have the time). This allows us the ability to work with our customers and give them the one-on-one they need. We have a push button which rings in the back staff area so we go out to the reference desk when it is pushed. We rely on signage to help people get to us.
On the first Wednesday of each month, we host Business First Wednesday; a virtual program presented by our local Small Business Development Center. Topics include Starting a Small Business, Legal Structures for Businesses, Protecting a Business Name, and so on. These are well attended, and our inventors find them extremely useful.
We work closely with individuals interested in starting a small business or who already have a business. We provide industry reports, trends, market research and analysis, patent landscapes, technology and patent vitality reports, patent and trademark search assistance, information regarding IP protection and community resources for any adjunct support. The reports come from our numerous proprietary databases.
We save our community over a million dollars per year by providing reports and results. The cost to access some of these databases would be too expensive for a small business. We use ArcGIS Business Analyst, Factiva, First Search, IBIS World, InnovationQ, MergentIntellect, Pitchbook, and Statista to give our customers the accurate and timely information they need.
Hobart William Smith Colleges, Rochester Institute of Technology, Monroe Community College, Cornell University, Ithaca College, and Roberts Wesleyan University are just a few of the schools we present at during the school year. They have entrepreneurship programs and programs that allow students to submit a Provisional