The Monty Hyams Archive: a new resource for the information history of the late 20th century

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report a new resource for the study of the history of the development of information science and information services in the late twentieth century. The Monty Hyams archives include documents relating to the career of Montagu Hyams (1918-2013), the Founder of Derwent Publications, and an innovator in patents information, chemical and pharmaceutical information, and online information access. The Archive is housed in the Department of Library and Information Science at City, University of London. Design/methodology/approach The origins and development of the Monty Hyams Archive are described, and its value examined by an initial analysis of the light it sheds on the development of Derwent’s World Patents Index. Findings The newly established Hyams Archive allows analysis of previously private and unseen documents, which reveal the fascinating and complex personalities, issues and negotiations which led to the establishment of some of the most significant information sources and access methods of the pre-internet information environment. Originality/value The Monty Hyams Archive is a new and unique resource for the study of the development of the scientific information environment in the last decades of the twentieth century

Patent Information on the Internet

Many people believe that the entire world's information is somehow accessible on the Internet and costs virtually nothing to retrieve. Others view the Internet as a slow, overrated mechanism for obtaining information that may or may not be reliable. For the information specialist, the Internet has become another useful resource for obtaining information. This article is an attempt to provide an overview of free and commercial sites containing patent databases and to outline the possibilities as well as the limitations of these patent information sources. In addition to this written article, we have set up a Web site (http://chemsear.ch/chimia/) which contains all the important links as well as additional information about patents on the Internet

Statistical studies of patents literature

This study has been undertaken to determine what pseudo-proprietary information and patenting activity statistics could be derived from an online patents database. To achieve this, a thorough investigation uas made of patenting in the field of an important group of beta-lactam antibiotics, the. Cephalosporins. Patents data was retrieved from the World Patents Index online files of Derwent Publications Limited, and the bibliographic details of each patent application retrieved analysed according to numbers of patents per patentee, priority and publication dates, types of patents, etc. A review of technological advances in this subject was conducted, demonstrating the value of patents literature for such purposes. The relationship between sales volumes and patenting activity for Cephalosporins patentees has been investigated and found to show a. significant correlation between these parameters. As an extension, the USA patenting and sales activity for the leading USA Industrial Corporations (the 1981 Fortune 500) was studied; overall a high correlation was exhibited, but there were notable differences. between different industries. A number of bibliometric studies have been undertaken with a variety of patents data. for a number of techhologies. These studies include the application of Bradford-Zipf plots, other productivity studies and Vector Analysis to patents. Whilst previous studies on journal literature have investigated the applicability of frequency distributions as measures of author productivity, this study has for the first time applied Lotka's Law, Price's Pareto-type Distribution, Simon-Yule Distribution, Shockley's Lognormal Distribution, Borel-Tanner Distribution, Williams Geometric Series, Fisher's Logarithmic Series and the Negative Binomial Distribution to patents data. Theoretical distributions were ascertained using a series of microcomputer programs written in BASIC programming' language. The results indicate that of the distributions investigated, the Negative Binomial most closely fits the observed data when goodness-offit is measured by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test

Japanese materials science and engineering information on the Internet : a case study

Includes bibliographical references (p. [7-8]).Emi Takase and Rae Jean Wiggins

The computer storage, retrieval and searching of generic structures in chemical patents : the machine-readable representation of generic structures.

The nature of the generic chemical structures found in patents is described, with a discussion of the types of statement commonly found in them. The available representations for such structures are reviewed, with particular note being given to the suitability of the representation for searching files of such structures. Requirements for the unambiguous representation of generic structures in an "ideal" storage and retrieval system are discussed. The basic principles of the theory of formal languages are reviewed, with particular consideration being given to parsing methods for context-free languages. The Grammar and parsing of computer programming languages, as an example of artificial formal languages, is discussed. Applications of formal language theory to chemistry and information work are briefly reviewed. GENSAL, a formal language for the unambiguous description of generic structures from patents, is presented. It is designed to be intelligible to a chemist or patent agent, yet sufficiently ABSTRACT formaLised to be amenabLe to computer anaLysis. DetaiLed description is given of the facilities it provides for generic structure representation, and there is discussion of its Limitations and the principLes behind its design. A connection-tabLe-based internaL representation for generic structures, caLLed an ECTR <Extended Connection TabLe Representation) is presented. It is designed to represent generic structures unambiguousLy, and to be generated automatically from structures encoded in GENSAL. It is compared to other proposed representations, and its implementation using data types of the programming Language PascaL described. An interpreter program which generates an ECTR from structures encoded in a subset of the GENSAL Language is presented. The principles of its operation are described. Possible applications of GENSAL outside the area of patent documentation are discussed, and suggestions made for further work on the development of a generic structure storage and retrieval system based on GENSAL and ECTRs

The Monty Hyams Archive: A New Resource in Information Science History

The Monty Hyams Archive stands as an important source of information history. This project seeks to organise and investigate the contents of the Archive while providing information on standards application to the care of the Archive. Through the research methodologies of literary warrant analysis, documentary analysis, and historical research, this dissertation proposed standards for future care of the archive, inspected the documents, and evaluated their contents and assigned descriptions. Interviews and historical research were used to expand on the information found in the documents. The descriptions generated were used to discern the major themes within the Archive and to develop an argument for The Monty Hyams as a crucial information science and patent information history resource. The project resulted in the description of the Archive’s contents, a proposed framework of standards with which to care for the Archive, and a confirmation of the argument that The Monty Hyams Archive exists as an important source of information history

Information Outlook, October 1997

Volume 1, Issue 10https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_1997/1009/thumbnail.jp

Scientific communication, information flows in industry - exemplified by pharmaceutical information in China & the UK

This study compare information flows in China and the UK with the example of pharmaceutical information. The general objective is to explore the relationship between information situation and the status of science and industry in a country. In China scientific information has long dominated information flows while in the UK scientific information in dominance has gradually been changed to industrial information flow in dominance (i.e. information work by, for and associated with industry). After background study of information communication environment and medicines research in China and the UK, scientific communication and S&T information flow are firstly studied, taking examples from pharmaceutical sciences. Then the thesis proceeds into studying pharmaceutical information flow which includes not only scientific information but also business information, drug information, patent information and statutory information. A systematic comparison has been carried out to describe pharmaceutical information flow infrastructure; wider system of the information flow; information flow performance; relations among scientific information, business information, drug information, patent information and statutory information; relationships among system (pharmaceutical information flow), wider system (national pharmaceutical industry), general information environment, and special environment "national drug situation/pharmaceutical activity". The industry's role in pharmaceutical information flow in Britain and China reflects the fundamental difference in the two countries' situation. In the UK, pharmaceutical industry playa central role in the pharmaceutical information flow. Some information are directly related to the industry such as S&T information, patent information and business information, some are indirectly associated with the industry such as drug information and statutory information. The big industry, big science and big information may reflect the UK situation. On the other hand, pharmaceutical information flow in China is mainly S&T information flow and is not closely linked with the industry. The less sophisticated pharmaceutical industry has a premature "nerve system"- information flow. The very limited industry involvement in R&D and therefore in information work reflects the little industry, little science and little information in China

NASA Tech Briefs, February 1996

Topics covered include: Materials; Computer Programs; Mechanics; Machinery/Automation; Manufacturing/Fabrication; Mathematics and Information Sciences; Life Sciences; Books and Reports