The Oklahoma State University Library has been a Patent and Trademark Depository Library since 1956. We are housed in the main University Library and are part of the Government Documents Department, a regional depository for federal government documents. I am acting as interim head for government documents, so this has been taking more and more of my time!
Our PTRC continues to play a support role to other IP departments on campus in addition to working with independent inventors. These include the New Product Development/Inventor’s Assistance Center, also the Technology Development Center (tech transfer office). I train their graduate assistants annually and encourage them to have clients requiring in-depth research assistance contact us. I provide a bimonthly seminar on trademarks for the Food and Agricultural Products Center. I team teach senior design classes in engineering with our engineering librarian.
I am working with independent inventors primarily by phone and email, saving them the hour drive to Stillwater from Tulsa or Oklahoma City. I have them do a keyword search in Google Patents on their own to locate several relevant patents. They send these to me via email and then we work together to identify relevant CPC classifications which we then search on the USPTO website. Our OSU patents website includes most of our service information and links to information for inventors at USPTO: http://www.library.okstate.edu/patents/
I continue to emphasize to researchers and students the importance of searching patents in addition to journal literature as a supplement to traditional research. The LibGuide I have developed “Patents Online: Basics for Researchers,” includes an overview of patents in addition to searching by topic and fields, http://info.library.okstate.edu/patentsonline
Including articles to the Journal in addition to the updates from our PTRCs is a wonderful addition to our organization. I appreciate so much the opportunity to edit the Journal as you are all doing such wonderful things in each of your PTRCs. Many thanks to Martin Wallace for managing the PTRCA website.
I will miss everyone at the seminar this year due to our staffing and my parents moving to a retirement place at the same time.