Greetings from the Patents and Trademarks Depository Library at the Louisville Free Public Library. I’m Rae Shepherd-Shlechter, and I’m the Patents and Trademarks Librarian, the Business Reference Librarian, and the Government Documents Librarian here. I work with mostly independent inventors and take a small-business approach to intellectual property. I give a 2-hour workshop on intellectual property every month, with an emphasis on patent searching on the Web. I also give a 2-hour workshop in our computer lab on business research online. I get most of my customers from referrals from our local SCORE Chapter and the Greater Louisville Small Business Development Center. We also have a Librarian-Is-In Program where inventors and other intellectual property types can make an appointment to discuss any aspect of the patent/trademark/copyright process with me for a 45-minute session. I also try to work with the other federal documents depository collections in the state to get the word out that I’m here to help them with patents and trademarks reference questions. Currently, I’m serving a 3-year term on the State Advisory Council on Libraries, and I promise to advocate for my PTDL. Go team!

It’s been a challenging year for Louisville’s PTDL. We had more than 6.25 inches of rain in one hour and 7 inches over 7 hours on August 4, 2009, and havoc ensued. We lost everything in our basement—processing and cataloging, physical facilities, the bookmobiles, the order department, the automation department, the mainframe, many offices and about 50,000 books and media. Fortunately, the PTDL collection was not harmed, and I ran a mini-version of the department from our Southwest Branch in the southern part of Metro Louisville. They got me up and running with some tiff programs, and I had a computer lab at the facility to give my monthly Patents and Trademarks Workshop. I’m back at Main, and they are still rebuilding.

Training and travel money is non-existent for me at this time, but I do look forward to the training materials, electronic and otherwise I get from the USPTO and the PTDL membership. Keep up the good work, and we will soldier on.

Rae Shepherd-Shlechter
Patents and Trademarks Librarian
March 10, 2010