Posts by Kenneth Johnson

Run to failure: meaning operate your equipment (business) all out, don't bother to care for and maintain it (much less inspect it) properly — until everything has been pushed beyond its limits. To add insult to injury, ignore, and even penalize, your front-line people when they alert you to, or object to, the deliberate neglect.

Here is a selection of books new to the New York Times list of Business Best Sellers published in the print edition Sunday, November 11th, and, to catch up, the August 28th edition. Plus, a quick look at the Nielsen BookScan listing in the November 10th edition of the Wall Street Journal shows some titles new to this column. Enjoy!

The October 13, 2012 Economist included its quarterly business book reviews. Here is a listing.

For those interested in the articles, you can find them through some of our electronic resources (I recommend our Custom Newspapers database, available from home with a library card — I have put a link to the articles from Custom Newspapers after each title) or on The Economist's website (if you're a subscriber). For those who are too impatient to read those, I've included for each book, based on the articles, a short squib.

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of September 11, 18 and 25, 2012.

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of August 21 and 28, and September 4, 2012. These follow from the earlier postings of Plant Patent plates, which are listed, with links, in a table at the end of this entry.

We pride ourselves on our United States patent system. But, to misquote, all patents are local (or at least national). So anyone who wants patent protection in another country will have to meet the filing and legal requirements of that national government. And, of course, do a patent search!

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of August 7 and 14, 2012. These follow from the earlier postings of Plant Patent plates, which are listed, with links, in a table at the end of this entry.

For about a decade now it has been feasible to conduct prior art research for a U. S. Patent entirely online using free search tools available on the USPTO website. Although the availability of patent research resources online has not diminished the challenges of prior art searching, it has certainly made the activity more convenient.

Here is a selection of books new to the New York Times list of Business Best Sellers published in the print edition Sunday, August 5th. Also, a quick look at the Nielsen BookScan listing in the August 11th edition of the Wall Street Journal shows some titles new to this column. Enjoy!

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of July 17, 24 and 31, 2012. These follow from the earlier postings of Plant Patent plates, which are listed, with links, in a table at the end of this entry.

As before, please be careful in using these — they're really not appropriate to use for prior art or other similar searches. Otherwise, please enjoy!

The Economist. You have to love it, you probably also hate it. A weekly journal with too much to read in a week (especially for slow readers). And it keeps arriving in the mailbox, even when you're on vacation. In other words, it's taken until now to get around to putting up a post about these books reviewed several issues ago.

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of June 26, and July 3 and 10, 2012. These follow from the earlier Plant Patent plates posted for the weeks of April 17 and 24, 2012, the weeks of May 1, 8 and 15, 2012, the weeks of May 22, 29 and June 5, 2012 and the weeks of June 12 and 19, 2012.

Some may regret the passing of libraries receiving goverment information in paper form. But the goal of digitization isn't sensory deprivation; and anyway, paper materials started to disappear before the Internet came along — think microfiche, microfilm, even microcards (and yes, we have some of those at NYPL). Maybe someday all official goverment documents will be available online. However, not yet — there are still paper, and microform, collections here at SIBL.

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of June 12 and 19, 2012. These follow from the earlier Plant Patent plates posted for the weeks of April 17 and 24, 2012, the weeks of May 1, 8 and 15, 2012, and the weeks of May 22, 29 and June 5, 2012.

Did Cole Porter steal the music for some of his most popular songs? Ira B. Arnstein thought so. He took Porter, and several other songwriters, to court for copyright infringement during the 1930s and 1940s.

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of May 22, 29 and June, 2012. These follow from the earlier Plant Patent plates posted for the weeks of May 1, 8 and 15, 2012 and the weeks of April 17 and 24, 2012.

As before, please be careful in using these - they're really not appropriate to use for prior art or other similar searches. Otherwise, please enjoy!

For a while now, it's been a pretty sure thing: U.S. Federal Government Documents are posted online, for anyone with Internet access to find. Or at least to look for - you can give the U.S. Government Printing Office (which we'll be calling the GPO) website a try. But if you might be researching older documents, you still may have to pay a visit to a U.S. Federal Government Depository Library like SIBL. And to help readers prepare for such a visit, this post will offer information about traditional resources we recommend to search for Government Documents in our library.

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of May 1, 8 and 15, 2012. These follow from the earlier Plant Patent plates posted for the weeks of April 17 and 24, 2012.

It's not quite time to worry about choosing your beach reading yet. But Memorial Day is coming, and so it is time to think ahead just a little. With that in mind, here is a selection of books new to the New York Times list of Business Best Sellers published this last Sunday, May 13th.