PIUG Discussion List Archives
The PIUG/PATMG Patent Information Discussion List (PIUG-L) was replaced by the
PIUG Discussion
Forum on February 1, 2009. Please contact the PIUG wiki administrators,
Tom Wolff or A.J. D'Ambra, with questions.
Just as the PIUG/PATMG Patent Information Discussion List (PIUG-L) served as a
forum for discussion of questions relating to patent information, so does the PIUG Discussion Forum. News and
questions and concerns about new developments in patent information from
patent information users, patent offices, including the USPTO, the EPO and
others, and patent information vendors are encouraged. Indexing and
searching techniques, new databases and systems (online, in-house or on
CD-ROM), and developments in existing databases are suitable as topics for
discussion. Please see
Guidelines for Commercial Participation for further information.
The PIUG-L Archives (1995 through January 2009) are kindly provided by Questel. Special thanks are due to Yann Lievin at Questel for technical support and
Willem Gabilly at Questel and David Dickens, formerly at Questel, for their support and assistance with the Archive Cleanup Project.
The Questel Archive site also provides a Search feature which can locate messages by content search as well as by title, author or date.
PIUG expresses its sincere appreciation to Thomson Scientific - Derwent for its
long-standing hosting and support of the PIUG Discussion List and archives until the
PIUG-L was migrated to the commercial service Listbox in November 2006. We recall special thanks to Kim Rabbitts and Tracy
Davis at Derwent for their support in starting up the old PIUG-L, assistance with
the Archive Cleanup Project. Thanks are also due to Derwent for providing the edited and
HTML-converted Archives to Questel for the Mirror Archives.
Browse the PIUG-L Archives in annual segments using these dropdown menus
| PIUG-L Archives (all messages) |
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PIUG-L Job Archives |
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Access to the Archives starting in November 2006 are available on to PIUG-L subscribers by logging in via the form at
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=9135
and selecting the "Archives" tab.
Search the PIUG-L Archives using this custom Google Search box
To add this custom Google Search box for searching the PIUG-L Archives on your customized Google home page, click on the following icon:
Alternatively, the PIUG-L Archives will be searchable in its entirety at
http://www.questel.com/en/piug.htm.
History of the PIUG Discussion List and Archives
- 1988 to April 1995
The PIUG list started out as a discussion list on Dialog's DialMail Bulletin Board
facility. Messages were not archived there but some people saved copies anyway. Once the
discussion list moved to internet email, messages dating from this incarnation were
collected, but were never successfully converted to a format suitable for display on the
current archives. Although conversion was desired and was planned at several times, there
was always a lack of either the technical expertise, funding or personnel for such
conversion. At this late date (1999), it is probably no longer worth the effort.
- April 1995 to April 1996
Derwent offered their services to provide the first internet email incarnation of the
PIUG discussion list, using the ListProc software. Sandra Unger began serving as sysop for
the Discussion List. The archives were originally set up by Derwent to save messages in a
batch mode with all the messages posted on a given day concatenated into a digest form and
stored in the archive by date. This meant that only the title of the first message posted
on any given date could be searched by title, and that all subsequent messages were
concatenated to it, not individually listed. Many, but not all of the messages from this
period have now been found and edited to list separately in the current archives (the
oldest message in the current archives dates to October, 1995).
- April 1996 to October 2006
Derwent moved to MajorDomo software for the discussion list. William Murray took over
as sysop for the Discussion List in May, 1998. Messages from this time period were
captured by Derwent in a hypermail 1.02 Archive, but, at least in the early months, they
were often still captured from digest form. These early messages have now been edited and
separated into individually titled messages in the current archives.
- November 2006 to January 2009
The PIUG Discussion List was moved to the commercial hosting service,
Listbox. Access to archives starting in November
2006 are available on to PIUG-L subscribers by logging in via the form at
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=9135
and selecting the "Archives" tab. The full archive is accessible in yearly segments and searchable in
its entirety
at http://www.questel.com/en/piug.htm.
- February 1, 2009
The PIUG Discussion Forum
replaced the PIUG Discussion List.
Archive Cleanup Project
- In May, 1998, Elvin Hoel volunteered to lead a cleanup project to edit the
available archives records, removing irrelevant messages and separating the
archives into several smaller segments - to reduce the display time, and to
separate out into a separate archive all Job Posting messages for ease of
future reference. Other volunteers who helped with the clean up are Barbara
Burg, Alan Engel, Catherine Misner, Edlyn Simmons, Tony Trippe, and Fred vanderSteur.
As a consequence, all available records were individually reviewed, edited
if necessary to separate into individual messages, and the archives separated
into four segments:
- PIUG 1999 (the "new, dirty archives", not yet cleaned)
- PIUG 1998 (cleaned-up through Dec. 17)
- PIUG 1995-97 (cleaned-up, 100+ older messages added thanks to Fred vanderSteur)
Job Postings (all job postings from the 96-98 archives, separated into their
own archive)
These and all more recent archive segments are provided by Questel at
http://www.questel.com/en/piug.htm.
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