Patently Obvious: The place for patents in information literacy in the sciences
Date
2006-08-30
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
Patents are an underutilized source of scientific information, particularly in the life and health
sciences. Patents and patent applications usually contain the first disclosure of new technologies and
processes and serve to link theory with practice, providing ‘real world’ examples of the application of
scientific research. Increasingly, scientific discoveries are reported first in the patent literature, rather
than in academic journals. To ensure that science students have the skills that match the information
resources they will use as professionals, patent searching must become part of their information
literacy instruction. This article will discuss how valuable the patent literature can be to students, and
how to incorporate patent searching into library instruction. By way of illustration, a case study will
document how students in one class, Biochemistry 561, were introduced to patents.
Description
Keywords
Information Science
Citation
Research Strategies 20 (2006) 149–161 doi:10.1016/j.resstr.2006.06.004