The Salt Lake City PTDL is one of the collections in the J. Willard Marriott Library of the University of Utah. The Marriott Library was first designated a PDL (note – no ‘T’ for ‘T’rademarks back then!) in 1984. In addition to our current PTDL depository status, the Library has also been a federal GPO depository since 1893; a U.S. Department of Energy depository; United Nations, European Union, World Trade Organization and UNESCO depository; and depository for the State of Utah.

As the PTDL representative, I have been one of the Marriott Library’s federal documents librarians since 1987, and a member of PTDLA since my first conference in spring 1987. I have served the Association as Treasurer; as chair of the Finance Committee; and as PTDLA Chair in 1999/2000. I was delighted to be selected as the Thirteenth Patent Fellowship Librarian for the PTDL Program Office in our former Crystal City location from 1996 to 1998.

The Marriott Library celebrated our ‘Grand Re-opening’ this last October, to mark the formal completion of our most recent three-year major renovation project. As a part of our rethinking our collections, Government Documents are no longer a separate division. The SuDocs collection is still maintained as a discrete location in our building, but the former government documents librarians have moved into new areas within the Library. I have been moved into our new Research and Information Services division, where I provide all sorts of reference and technical services to patrons in our new Knowledge Commons, and continue with specialized reference and teaching for both intellectual property and government information. As part of my new responsibilities I have been appointed to a three-year term as chair of our DOCMAPS (Documents and Maps) group, where we draw people from around the Marriott Library with a common interest in providing reference, in-person and remotely; developing research guides and general awareness of these types of information; and continuing to develop our collections both electronically and in-print. My new activities on this committee have greatly expanded my areas of work, so I am less identified with the PTDL and government documents alone.

I continue to provide training and presentations to audiences around the University, and in the community at large. I continue to present to selected business students in our Lassonde Entrepreneurial Program on campus; bioengineering design classes with semester-long technology development projects; and campus administrative staff working with Sponsored Research and taking courses for additional certificates of expertise. My presentation to our campus administrative staff continues with a two-hour workshop on searching patents and patent families in the USPTO Web databases and on Esp@cenet.

One of the highlights of this past year was the awareness and promotion of the University of Utah’s exemplary accomplishments in spinning-off new companies based on University-owned technologies. According to the Association for University Technology Managers (AUTM), the University of Utah has tied with MIT for first place in the number of new companies started for 2008, and has done so with less than one-fourth the total research spending! See:

http://chronicle.com/article/University-Inventions-Sparked/64204/?sid=pm...
for the original article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and follow this link:
http://www.sltrib.com/education/ci_14412785

to a related article in the Salt Lake Tribune, our local Utah newspaper. Please note the statement (unverified, so far!) in the Tribune article that “U. officials say the U. has surpassed its Massachusetts rival in fiscal year 2009 with 23 spin-offs.” We’ll see, when the next AUTM report is published!

I would once again like to thank the administration of the Marriott Library for recognizing the value of our PTDL status and participation, and their willingness to fund my attendance at every annual PTDL program since 1987.