For the Dallas National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, which
starts on Sunday 3/29/98 and ends Thursday 4/2/98, I have agreed to chair a
patent symposium, probably 1/2 day but I believe we could get a full day if
there were enough good material. Those of you with long ACS histories will
appreciate the fact that some of the best meetings of the Chem Info Division
over the years have been those that featured patent symposia, and I believe
we can put on a session this year to match any of the past ones.
There's a theme: changes in computerized patent searching brought about by
new tools of the '90s. The current decade has indeed been one that has
brought about huge changes in the way we can search for patent information:
full text files of US AND EPO patents, not only on traditional vendor
systems but also on the Internet. This along with drastic modifications of
existing systems such as the Derwent revised polymer indexing system.
We need a survey paper describing the various new databases that are out
there, with some indication (but not huge detail) of the differences among
them. We certainly would love to have detailed analyses of differences in
capability between directly competing databases. To my dear friends at
database producers: sorry, but I do see this as a users' symposium. I'm
not looking for papers from you pushing your products.
I have already allotted one spot to a proposed paper on relevance ranking;
otherwise the field is quite open. The presentations must of course conform
to ACS Meeting requirements. Let me hear from you with your proposals as
soon as possible. I'll be away until July 7, but I'll get back to you as
soon as possible after that. Let's make the Dallas Symposium one they'll
all remember.
Regards, Stu Kaback
smkabac@erenj.com