Spring and summer have been a busy time for the Kelley Center for Government Information, Data and Geospatial Services staff as will be the fall. Kathy Weimer, whom we welcomed as department head in January, is guiding the Kelley Center to expand its offerings related to data services and data management. You can learn more about Kathy from an article on page 7 of the Spring 2015 edition of News From Fondren.
Planning and carrying out new opportunities for intellectual property training has also been the focus of the department. In addition to our regular monthly patent search classes, on May 19 Michael Hydorn and Daphne Joseph from the Patent and Trademark Resource Center (PTRC) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), came to Fondren to offer patent and trademark search training to those at Rice and from the greater Houston Area. As part of the event attended by around 100 people, representatives from local organizations who assist with intellectual property and business procedures described their services. Also, after months of planning, Rice patents became available in the Digital Scholarship Archive this summer creating a much easier and more complete way of finding them and collocating patents with a researcher’s other scholarly body of work. Members of the group making this happen included: Linda Spiro and Siu Min Yu, Government Information Librarians; Scott Carlson, Metadata Coordinator; Monica Rivero, Digital Curation Coordinator; Kathy Weimer, Head, Kelley Center for Government Information, Data and Geospatial Services; Lisa Spiro, Executive Director of Digital Scholarship Services; and Shannon Kipphut-Smith, Scholarly Communications Liaison. On August 7 the department hosted a celebration to highlight the availability of Rice patents in the repository and the 225th anniversary of the first United States patent. Additionally, on September 16 from 1:30-3:00 pm Craig Morris, Educational Outreach Attorney for Trademarks at the USPTO, will speak in the Kyle Morrow Room in a free program entitled Trademark Basics: What Every Small Business Should Know Now Not Later.
With the advent of Fondren’s new web pages, content that was available on our government web pages on the old site is in the process of being moved to LibGuides. If you are having trouble locating information, please ask at the government information desk or call 713-348-5483.