In four weeks’ time, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is inviting representatives of governments and civil society to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day, under the theme “Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: take your ideas to market”.

IFLA will be taking the opportunity to celebrate the importance of the work done by library professionals to support and accompany small and medium-sized businesses.

Whether they are family businesses, start-ups or otherwise, small and medium-sized enterprises often have limited resources, and do not always have the opportunity to receive professional and strategic advice on how to work with intellectual property.

As a result, access to curated information, resources and services such as coaching, training and guidance provided by library professionals can be crucial for these businesses. This can help them understand how to support the development of a business model related to intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks, trade secrets or copyright.

As OCLC has reported, in the United States alone, public libraries were used 2.8 million times each month to support small businesses.

On World Intellectual Property Day 2021, IFLA and its partner EIFL are therefore pleased to present a webinar on 26th April at 16:00 CET entitled: Libraries mean business.

This webinar will allow us to highlight the work of three library organisations working to support small and medium-sized enterprises in particular on intellectual property issues, through three speakers:

Jeremy O’Hare, Information Expert: Intellectual Property, Business and IP Center, British Library in United-Kingdom.

Tara Radniecki, Head of DeLaMare Science & Engineering Library, Patent and Trademark Resource Center Librarian, University of Nevada, in the United-States of America.

Bernadette Cogan, Divisional Librarian, Central Library Services, Dublin City Council, in Ireland.

If you are interested in this event, join us thanks to the registration link.