To all:
As a former ITIRC Information Analyst at IBM at its Technical Information
Retrieval Center back in the mid-1970's, the IBM Technical Disclosure
Bulletins were indeed in electronic form as far back as the early 60's. It
was previously available at IBM through ITIRC, which mounted the contents of
the bulletin as well as other technical papers, engineering standards and
changes, and the like. In the mid 60's IBM mounted Engineering Index
(Compendex) and NTIS, plus made the old CA POST and AIP files available to
its employees in batch mode. Business files were added in about 1976. In
the early 70's IBM made all this information available in interactive mode
through its internal network to every laboratory and technical site
throughout the country, including a site in Canada. The software developed
at IBM to provide this information to its users was the old STAIRS program
which was later developed into the BRS and DataStar systems.
I do not remember if the TDBs go back to 1958 but I am positive that they
were available electronically in abstract form from about 1964. It is quite
possible that IBM later rekeyed the earlier documents to put them into their
system. Since there were hardware/software limitations back in those days
on the size of document record very few, if any, were full text. However,
hard copies were available. Does Delphion provide ordering capability?
I suggest that you contact someone at Delphion to determine the earliest
dates they have included for TDBs to make sure that they have the full range
of TDBs. Also, they should be able to direct you in how to order the
complete document for those early records.
Suzanne Elsoffer
attached mail follows:
I would like to tap into the collective wisdom of the list members regarding
the following.
Is Delphion IP Network the only online provider of IBM Technical Disclosure
Bulletin? This is what IBM Web site seems to suggest, when saying that
issues of TDB "... up to September 1996 are viewable online from Delphion's
IP Network Web site". Does this mean ALL issues, starting from 1958
(apparently the TDB's first publication year)? Also, what is the nature of
and what is searchable in the electronic file and how did this file come
into existence? It seems unlikely, even for IBM, that an electronic version
of TDB was maintained from 1958, so at least a part of the file may have
been OCRed from hard copies (assuming it goes full text back to 1958). Or
is it a "hybrid" database, combining full text for later issues with images
only of earlier ones (similarly as the USPTO database of US patents)? If so,
what is text-searchable for the "image only" part of the database, if at
all? The term "viewable" in the above citation from the IBM Web site does
not imply any searchability.
Also, what is the extent of coverage of TDB publications by other technical
and engineering databases, such as INSPEC or Ei Compendex Plus? "Quick and
dirty" searches in the versions of these two databases available to me seem
to indicate that this coverage is quite limited, and in both cases stops
approximately in 1986, starting around 1970.
Any information (or hints where to look for it) regarding the above issues
would be greatly appreciated.
Kaz Kaminski
ktk@infoscitech.ca
Kazimierz T. Kaminski, Ph.D.
Registered Patent Agent
InfoSciTech
tel.: (613) 824-9076
fax: (613) 824-9562
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