Posts by Kenneth Johnson

PP23492 - Delosperma plant named 'Jewel of Desert Topaz'Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of March 5, 12, 19 and 26, 2013.

Plant Patent plates for 2012 and 2013 have been listed, with links, in the table posted here.

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

Fact: Hardly a day goes by without some discussion in the press about "drones" — unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS).

Fact: Despite public awareness of U.S. drone programs, very little hard information has been offered to the public.

Fact: Portions of the legal and public policy justifications for implementing U.S. drone programs, as well as other documentation and information about these programs, have been only reluctantly provided to the public.

Fact: You have an opportunity to learn more about many of these and other information issues 

Today I'm going to write about trade shows. I'm going to use as an example the recent trade show/exhibition for the violin (really, string instrument) trade, MondoMusica New York 2013.

What are Trade Shows? The name says it all. Businesses and businesspeople getting together at an event organized for the chance to network, display their wares, buy and sell — to each other and, possibly, the public.

How do you find out about trade shows? Good sources would be Trade Journals and Directories. Some directory titles:

Free legal resources on the Internet are great for everyone's needs. Until they aren't. So, what do you do next?

Libraries — public libraries — are for many a community the place where citizens expect to find law-related resources: Federal and State legislative and regulatory materials, and in many larger communities case law and lawyer-oriented secondary sources for those carefully researching legal issues. The move to web-based legislative, administrative and other legal resources by Federal and State governments and court systems is, of course, a trend 

PP23433 - Gerbera plant named 'UFGE 7034'Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of February 12, 19 and 26, 2013.

Here is a selection of books new to the New York Times list of Business Best Sellers published in the print edition Sunday, March 3rd. Plus, a quick look at the Nielsen BookScan listing in the March 2nd edition of the Wall Street Journal shows some titles new to this column. Enjoy!

Each title is noted with its ranking. Click on any of the titles below and place a hold to request the item. Remember to update your contact information (phone number or e-mail address), so you are notified when the book arrives for you at your

Of what concern are drones to librarians and other information professionals? I mean those drones, scions of the remote-control model airplanes of a more innocent age — now grown up and more sinister and troublesome than anyone might have predicted in their youth (or might they?)

The use of drones in the area of national security, not to mention law enforcement generally, has emerged as a hot topic recently. The topic isn't new of course. Nevertheless, the discussion has begun to heat up, with 

A freak October blizzard. Driving to the WOHS reunion. Highway traffic stopped I decided to bushwhack through Newark and the Oranges. Locations remembered, long deteriorated, run-down urban industrial decay.

Really, it was just a patent that started this chain of rememberances. Looking for a different British patent from 1873 I saw the name: Thomas Alva Edison. Dated September 11th, Number 2988 for Perforated Telegraphic Paper. Edison. The inventor. If you lived in West Orange, you definitely heard of him.

The 

PP23359 - Mandarin tree named '950'Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of January 22, 29 and February 5, 2013.

Plant Patent plates for 2012 and 2013 have been listed, with links, in the table posted here.

The January 12, 2013 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 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.

Click on any of the titles below 

PP23298 - Dahlia plant named 'HDW79'Happy New Year! Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of January 1, 8 and 15, 2013.

Plant Patent plates for 2012 and 2013 have been listed, with links, in the table posted here.

Extraction:  ... 3. a. The action or process of obtaining (the constituent elements, juices, etc.) from any substance by heat, pressure, etc. (Oxford English Dictionary - available online with a NYPL library card.)

Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortunes and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale, by Tom 

Crude. Oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea. Politics. Lobbying. Old boys. Influence.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, by Steve Coll.

It may shock the gentle reader to learn that petroleum is power. Well, maybe not. Look around — at the street, at houses and businesses. Without oil we'd stop, and maybe freeze (but we'd have light, since oil is rarely used for electricity 

PP23250 - Centaurea plant named 'Black Sprite'Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of December 11, 18 and 25, 2012.

July dawn. A passerby finds a scavenger lying in the mud by the Mumbai airport road. Crying for help — leg mashed and bloody — probably hit by a car. "Thousands of people passed this way every morning." ... "At 2:30 p.m., a Shiv Sena man made a call to a friend in the Sahar Police Station about a corpse that was disturbing small children."

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, 

PP23193 - Pineapple plant named 'Franklynn'Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of November 20, 27 and December 4, 2012.

PP23190 - Cordyline plant named 'Spricorfantasy'Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of November 6 and 13, 2012.

Extry! Extry! Extry! Read all about it! Newsflash! Morningstar Investment Research Center — in the New York Public Library's subscription — is now available to NYPL Library Card Holders offsite.

Don't have a library card yet? It's simple! Find out how to get one.

I reported on this database in a

PP23140 - Anthurium plant named 'Anthzupap'Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of October 23 and 30, 2012.