Stephen Van Dulken

PATLIB UK would like to offer our best wishes to Stephen Van Dulken of the British Library London who retired earlier this month - to say that he will be missed by us all is an understatement - he has been a great source of information and inspiration to all, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of patents and their history.

Steve has championed the importance of intellectual property as a whole, and patent information in particular, right through the history of our network from PIN to PATLIB UK and BIPC.

Our current Chair, Maria Lampert, has had the pleasure of working with Steve for very many years at the British Library and assures us that his are hard shoes to fill.

In his last blog post for the British Library Steve said "I intend to stay active in the field, and will have my own blog on inventions, searching and protection, while working part-time as what I suppose could grandly be called a consultant librarian in that field. One advantage of an unusual surname is that it will be easy to find me on the Internet."

We wish him well in his retirement and great success in whatever he decides to do with all the 'spare' time he will now have.

So Steve, have a well deserved rest and thank you for all of your help!  Best Wishes PATLIB UK