The Business & Science Department of Miami-Dade Public Library System’s Main Library has housed our PTDL since 1984. In the past year, Candice Pinder, Librarian 1, has joined our Business & Science staff. Candice’s major duties include assisting our PTDLP representative, Robert Klein, in maintaining our patent and trademark collection, helping patrons in fulfilling their patent and trademark information and research needs, and creating enhanced methods for our PTDL to provide intellectual property services to our customers.

The other Business & Science staff, who also provide patent and trademark assistance are Jennifer Shipley (our department manager), librarians Murray Wilcox and Julio Granda (our Urban Affairs Librarian), Claudia Torres (Librarian 1 Trainee), and Library Assistant James Wargacki. In the past year, we have received various volumes of the Official Gazette to fill gaps in our collection and Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Patents and Indexes of Patents Issued from the United States Patent Office from as early as 1842.

We continue to provide individual instruction by appointment, in addition to telephone and walk-in customers. We now provide public access to PubWEST at our Business & Science reference desk.

This year, we hope to begin offering a series of presentations at schools within the Miami-Dade County School District. We plan to include information on the different forms of intellectual property (patents, trademarks, copyright, etc.) and to demonstrate the uses of the available patent and trademark resources such as www.uspto.gov and PubWEST.