Now all of this information was at the top of my memory at one point and all
of it has sunk to various levels of obscurity in my memory as other things
crowd in and demand attention. New features, new databases, all furiously
attempting to demand attention.
The vendors have all set up Web pages and asked us "What do we want to see
on these web
pages?" Well what I want is a "Patent Searching Knowledge Base". A superb
model for this effort is Microsoft's Knowledge Base, which is available on
Compuserve and on various Internet sites (I only use the Compuserve version
so I'm not certain of the Internet addresses). The Microsoft Knowledge Base
is broken up by product (MS Access, Visual Basic, Windows-95, etc.).
Similarly the "Patent Searching Knowledge Base" Could be broken up by
Database (Derwent, IFI-Claims, Chemical Abstracts, USPM, Japio, etc.) or by
Vendor (STN, Dialog, Orbit, Lexis, etc.).
Each article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base has a meaningful title and
explains how to do one specific task. For example I can search on MS-Access
version 3 and find articles that give explicit code examples on how to use a
Common Dialog Box in Access. Similarly in the "Patent Searching Knowledge
Base", I should be able to search on Derwent and Orbit and find out how to
search in IFI-Claims, crossfile the patent numbers over to Derwent and
combine the results with hits from a Derwent-API merged file search.
Microsoft created the Knowledge Base because the tools they had designed
were so complex and powerful that no one could use them. I see a certain
parallel in the powerful patent searching systems, but here we have the even
more complex problem of forever dealing with legacy indexing systems ("old
Plasdoc" vs. "new Plasdoc", apologies to Don Walter at Derwent). I think it
is time that the mountain of paper describing all these wonderful searching
tools be transformed into an electronic "Patent Searching Knowledge Base".
Go on Compuserve or find the Microsoft Knowledge Base on the Internet and
see how they have it organized as a model for what could be done. It will
not be cheap, it will not be easy, but it would be utterly useful!!
And I could get rid of at lease some of the MOUNTAIN of paper in my office
Sandra Unger
-- =============================================================== Sandra Unger | Mail: ssunger@erenj.com | (908) 474-6605 ===============================================================