Databases U

Databases beginning with the letter U.

 

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Uganda Under Colonial Rule, in Government Reports, 1903-1961

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Description: The colony of Uganda was managed by the government departments who wrote these progress reports. Some reports start in the 1900’s, but most reports cover from the 1920’s until independence. These reports explain why those statistics are at the levels recorded. The contents pages at the front of each report list the departments which existed at that time. Comparing the contents pages reveals how the structure of the colonial government changed over time.

 

 

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Access information: Available on and off-campus. Choose Login via UK federation. Also requires separate registration with UK Data Service
Description: UKDS.Stat host hundreds of economic and social datasets provided by the World Bank, OECD, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, and International Energy Agency. Key datasets include World Energy Balances, World Development Indicators, Balance of Payments Statistics, Direction of Trade Statistics, International Financial Statistics, World Economic Outlook, Main Economic Indicators, Quarterly National Accounts, and the Human Rights Atlas. Datasets also cover statistics on science, environment, education, health, and in depth regional statistics.

Additional information:

Please refer to the Research Data Service for more information on statistics and data.

 

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Access information: Available on and off-campus. Choose Login via UK federation. Also requires separate registration with UK Data Service
Description: The UK Data Service is a comprehensive resource funded by the ESRC and delivered by the UK Data Service to support researchers, teachers and policymakers who depend on high-quality social and economic data. The UK Data Service provides access to over 7,000 digital data collections for research and teaching purposes covering an extensive range of key economic and social data, both quantitative and qualitative, and spanning many disciplines and themes. Key data in our collection: UK surveys, Cross-national surveys, Longitudinal studies, Census data, International macrodata, Business microdata.
Coverage: 1971 - present

Additional information:

Please refer to the Research Data Service for more information on statistics and data.

 

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Access information: Available on and off-campus. 
Description: The UK Medical Heritage Library brings together books and pamphlets from 10 research libraries in the UK, focused on the 19th and early 20th century history of medicine and related disciplines.

 

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Access information. Access on and off campus.
Description.

Database includes 3 million pages of 19th to 21st century British popular newspapers, from 1835 to current (updated daily). Titles include: Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Church Times, The Watchman, Daily Worker, Morning Star and collections covering World Wars I & II by means of Fascist and Communist Political Press and a number of Regional Newspapers.

Please note the Daily Mirror is no longer included in UK Press Online but you can access it via The Mirror Historical Archive instead.

 

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UK Research Councils

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Description:

The Gateway to Research portal holds information on projects funded by the different UK research councils and Innovate UK, including grants awarded, project descriptions, and partners working on the project. It includes details of active projects and the outcomes for projects that have finished. To find funded theses, use the filters to select “studentships” and the relevant funding council. The short record only shows the title and institution to which the funding was awarded, but the full record includes further details. 

 

 

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Description:

Comics have become an increasingly popular area of academic study, and yet the typical library has only a small selection of graphic novels in the catalog. Underground and Independent Comics solves this problem, collecting thousands of comics—many extremely rare and hard to find—in one, easy-to-use online collection. Volume I covers major works from North America and Europe, beginning with the first underground comix from the 1950s and continuing through to modern sequential artists.  It incorporates 75,000 pages of material from artists such as Basil Wolverton and Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Harvey Pekar, Spain Rodriguez, and Vaughn Bode, and modern masters including Peter Bagge, Kim Deitch, Dave Sim, Dan Clowes, and Los Bros.  The collection contextualizes these original works with 25,000 pages of interviews, commentary, theory, and criticism from journals, books, and magazines, including The Comics Journal. Also included in this collection is The Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Frederick Wertham—the book that led to one of the largest censorship programs in US history—and the complete transcripts of the senate subcommittee hearings that birthed the Comics Code Authority and, inadvertently, the underground comix movement.

 

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Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels: Volume II

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Description:

The second volume expands on the debut database by offering an additional 100,000 pages of important, rare, and hard-to-find works, scholarly writings, and more. It adds extensive coverage of the pre-Comics Code era of horror, crime, romance, and war comics that fueled the backlash leading to the advent of the Comics Code. Selections include works by visionaries such as Alex Toth, Boody Rogers, Fletcher Hanks, Steve Ditko, Joe Kubert, Bill Everett, Joe Simon, and Jack Kirby, along with essential series such as Crime Does Not Pay and Mister Mystery, and many others both famous and infamous. Volume II also contains tens of thousands of pages of non-mainstream, post-code comics and secondary materials from around the world, including the US, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, England, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Korea, Japan, and more. Notable titles include Essex County by Jeff Lemire, From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, 120 Days of Simon by Simon Gardenfors, Gen Manhwa by various artists, Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason, and God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post-World War II Manga. Ancillary materials within Volume II render the collection ideal for students and researchers seeking a holistic perspective on the historical role of underground comics. Dozens of associated scholarly writings and commentaries add perspective and enrich understanding of the works and their cultural significance.

 

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Description:

The third volume offers 125,000 pages of contemporary primary sources for comic studies research focusing on the Modern Age of comics from 1986 to the present. It examines trends and developments particular to the Modern Age of comics in North America — digital creation tools, innovative shifts in art and narratives, and the rise of independent publishing houses and diverse voices. It also provides in-depth coverage of the history and creators of some of the most popular comics and graphic novels ever created.

 

 

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UNESCO Documents and Publications

Access information: Freely available
Description: Education, social and natural science, culture and communication database of bibliographic records which also provides access to the full text of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) documents, publications, periodicals.
Coverage: From 1945.
Additional information: UNESCO thesaurus

 

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United States and the Two Koreas, 1969-2000

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Description: The National Security Archive's collection on U.S.-Korean relations covers the full range of diplomatic, security, and economic ties between Washington and Seoul, and the challenges to the U.S. posed by an adversarial North Korea. It spans events from the Nixon administration's response to the April 15, 1969 downing, by North Korean MiG-17s, of a U.S. EC-121 reconnaissance plane over the Sea of Japan, to efforts during the Clinton years to deter Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. The collection contains approximately 1,800 records released by the State Department, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other agencies, as well as historical material compiled through research at the National Archives and the presidential libraries.

 

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United States and the Two Koreas, Part II

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Description: This second tranche on U.S.-Korean relations covers, as did Part One, the full range of diplomatic, security, and economic ties between the United States and its ally, South Korea; and the challenges to the U.S. posed by an adversarial North Korea. The documents – obtained and selected since the publication of Part One – add significant breadth and depth to the Archive’s coverage of events and issues from Nixon into the first Obama administration. The collection contains 1,634 records originating with the State Department, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other agencies, including key documents from the WikiLeaks database.
Coverage: 1969-2010

 

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Access information: Available on and off campus. Some collections are only available to staff and students.
Description: These collections display highlights of the resources of the University of Edinburgh Library, principally from within Special Collections. At present there are almost 12,000 images available.
  Collections include: Hill and Adamson, the Salvsen Collection, Walter Scott Collection, Western Medieval Manuscripts, the Laing Collection, Oriental Manuscripts and Images from the School of Scottish Studies.

 

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Unsplash

Access information: Freely available.
Description:

Images which can be freely used for commercial and non-commercial purposes. 

It is good practice to seek permission and credit the creator.

Copyright: License information

 

 

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Access information:

Access on and off campus. For off campus access please use the University VPN - Access to the University network via the VPN.

To register for the mobile app, click Login/Register link and register as a new user using your @ed.ac.uk email address.  Once registered, you can install the UpToDate Mobile App on up to two devices.

Description: UpToDate Anywhere is an evidence-based knowledge system authored by physicians to help clinicians make the right decisions at the point of care. Content is continually updated and is based on the latest evidence; it undergoes a rigorous editorial process and is written by a global community of 5,100 physicians, world-renowned experts in their specialties. UpToDate also includes basic patient information for c.150 medical conditions.

 

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Access Information: Access on and off campus.
Description: Since its inception Urban History has featured an annual bibliography of publications in urban history, including monographs, periodicals, edited collections, and more recently, electronic publications. This bibliography represents an authoritative guide to the most recent scholarship in urban history and has proved an extremely valuable resource for teaching and research. In order to build upon this success Urban History has launched a new initiative to publish a cumulative bibliography going back to 1974 (amounting to over 33,000 items) available online as a fully searchable database, updated annually, which will be free of charge to all subscribers to Urban History.

 

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U.S. Climate Change Diplomacy: From the Montreal Protocol to the Paris Agreement, 1981-2015

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Description:

This collection focuses on two series of international negotiations that dominated U.S. climate policy during this period: the 1987 Montreal Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement. It is unrivalled in its scope and primary-source content, with newly declassified documents showing how each administration framed its goals for the negotiations and how they navigated the complex interplay of diplomacy and domestic policy. Included materials address negotiations in detail, assessments of other governments' positions, briefing materials, and more.

Coverage: 1981-2015.

 

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US Congressional Budget Office Publications

Access information: Freely available
Description: US healthcare. The US Congressional Budget Office (US CBO) has a mandate to provide US Congress with "Objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and the information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process."

 

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U.S. Declassified Documents Online

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Description: This database provides access to previously classified documents that were used to develop and implement U.S. domestic and foreign policy and deal with events and crises. The comprehensive compilation of declassified documents comes from presidential libraries, the Department of State, Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, United Nations, National Security Council, and other executive agencies.

 

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U.S. Diplomatic Post Records, 1914-1945

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Description:

Diplomatic post records — those kept at the embassies or legations rather than in Washington — contain the messages from Washington, retained copies of outgoing dispatches, locally gathered information and background material on decision making. Represented in this module are Japan, Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras and nine more nations.

Coverage: 1914-1945.

 

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U.S. Espionage and Intelligence, 1947–1996

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Description:

Complementing earlier National Security Archive collections about the structure and operations of U.S. spy agencies, this set consists of 1,180 documents, totaling 36,023 pages. The great bulk of the collection consists of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Specific types of documents include organization and functions manuals; unit, agency, and departmental regulations; command histories; interagency directives; evaluations of intelligence community performance; and assorted memoranda.

Coverage: 1947-1996.

 

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U.S. Foreign Policy in the Carter Years, 1977-1981: Highest-Level Memos to the President

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Description:

This collection features every declassified daily or weekly memo to President Carter from National Security Advisor Brzezinski and from Secretaries of State Vance and Muskie; as well as every available meeting record of the National Security Council's two subgroups – the Policy Review Committee and the Special Coordination Committee. Topics include the conflict in the Middle East, Iran hostage crisis, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, SALT talks, diplomatic relations with China, Nicaraguan revolution, and U.S. concern for global human rights.

   

 

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The U.S. Intelligence Community After 9/11

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Description:

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York and Washington led to profound changes in U.S. foreign and defense policy, internal security practices, and indeed the entire national security structure, including dramatic changes in the organization and operations of the U.S. Intelligence Community.  The U.S. Intelligence Community after 9/11 reflects the National Security Archive's long-standing success – through research and the Freedom of Information Act – in documenting the organizational and operational changes that have occurred since the attacks.

Coverage: 2001-2009.

 

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The U.S. Intelligence Community: Organization, Operations and Management, 1947–1989

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Description:

Recognizing the central role of intelligence in U.S. foreign policy, this collection provides a detailed description of the varied civilian and military organizations that constitute the U.S. intelligence community, their past and present operations, and the mechanisms by which the community's activities are managed . Documents include previously inaccessible documents such as functional manuals, unit histories, and internal directives – that portray the bureaucratic reality underlying some of the most highly secret activities of the U.S. government.

Coverage: 1947-1989.

 

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U.S. Intelligence and China: Collection, Analysis and Covert Action

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Description:

This, the second collection on China, includes more than 2,300 documents providing new insights into various aspects of U.S. intelligence operations against Beijing. The finished intelligence resulting from these activities addressed a diversity of topics, from military capabilities to domestic policies, which was critical in helping to shape U.S. policy toward the emerging world power. This collection provides insights into all these operations, revealing U.S. concerns about its rival, China, and its ally, Taiwan. The set was assembled from materials originating from a variety of intelligence organizations.

 

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U.S. Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction: From WW II to Iraq

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Description:

This collection includes primary sources used by Jeffrey Richelson, one of the world's leading experts on intelligence, as the basis for the widely acclaimed book, Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (W.W. Norton, 2006). In addition to those once largely inaccessible materials, the set includes many of the U.S. Intelligence Community's products on the world's nuclear, biological, chemical, ballistic missile, and military space programs from World War II to the present. Consisting of over 600 documents and 8,300 pages, the set is the product of an extensive series of Freedom of Information Act requests and in-depth archival research.

 

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U.S. Military Intelligence Reports, 1911-1944

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Description:

Over the years, military attachés reported on internal politics, social and economic conditions, and foreign affairs of the countries in which they were stationed. This module contains Intelligence reports for seven foreign nations, plus Biweekly Intelligence Summaries and Combat Estimates.

Coverage: 1911-1944.

 

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U.S. Military Uses of Space, 1945–1991

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Description:

A critical yet often overlooked arena of national security concern is outer space.  This collection of previously classified histories, program management directives, requirements studies, and other documents shows the evolution of a variety of U.S. military space programs – historically among the most highly classified documents of the U.S. government. Topics range from a 1951 report on using satellites for reconnaissance to a 1990 briefing paper on air support to Operation Desert Shield.  The U.S. Military Uses of Space collection provides an unusually extensive documentary record of this highly sensitive subject.

Coverage: 1945-1991.

 

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U.S. Nuclear History, 1969-1976: Weapons, Arms Control, and War Plans in an Age of Strategic Parity

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Description: This compilation of recently declassified documents, the vast majority of them published here either for the first time or in less excised form than previously, details the nuclear weapons policies of the Nixon and Ford administrations – a critical period in the nuclear age that is vital for understanding the developments of subsequent years.  It is the second part of a series by the Archive on U.S. nuclear history.  Among other focuses, the set details the Nixon administration’s policy of pursuing technological advantage after the Soviet Union succeeded in reaching parity in strategic forces.
Coverage: 1969-1976.

 

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U.S. Nuclear History: Nuclear Arms and Politics in the Missile Age, 1955–1968

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Description: This collection, the first part of a series, comprehensively documents major developments in U.S. nuclear weapons policies and programs from the mid-1950s through 1968, the period that set the nuclear stage for the decades of the Cold War that followed. Given the importance of the nuclear competition to superpower tensions during the post-World War II era, not only as a source of friction in itself but as an element that made the tensions inconceivably dangerous, the documents in this collection introduce the reader to one of the critical inner mechanisms of the Cold War.
Coverage: 1955-1968.

 

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U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy, 1945–1991

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Description: Spanning the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of Iraq's nuclear program, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Policy offers researchers an extensive documentary record of the development of U.S. policy in that sphere. 2,651 documents totaling 14,000 pages cover three policymaking periods, including early U.S. efforts to promote international controls over atomic energy, the Atoms for Peace program, and the pursuit of an export-led non-proliferation policy that honors the obligations established by the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968.  Access to this history is crucial to understanding the current challenges and dilemmas facing U.S. policymakers in the post-Cold War era, from North Korea to Iran.
Coverage: 1945-1991.

 

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U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation 2, Part I: From Atoms for Peace to the NPT, 1954-1968

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Description: A rich collection of U.S. government records on nuclear non-proliferation policy during a formative period, this set documents the creation of the major institutions and agreements that make up the international non-proliferation system, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the first iteration of the IAEA safeguards system, and the negotiation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The collection also details the U.S. government’s concern about emerging nuclear weapons states — the “Nth Country Problem”— and its efforts to monitor nuclear activities in China, France, India, Israel, and elsewhere. Another important topic is the diplomatic effort to find a nuclear role within NATO for West Germany so as to deter possible German interest in an independent weapons capability. Solving that problem was essential for the breakthrough in the NPT negotiations during 1966-1967.
Coverage: 1954-1968.

 

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U.S. Office of Public Health and Science Publications

Access information: Freely available
Description: US Office of Public Health and Science's full-text publications online from the US Offices of: Surgeon General, Disease Prevention & Health Promotion, Research Integrity, Minority Health, Population Affairs and Women's Health. Also the President’s Council on Physical Fitness & Sports.

 

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U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, Part I: 1954-1968

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Description:

This collection documents the deadliest conflict in modern U.S. history prior to the current war against terrorism. The goal was to assemble both classic and relatively well-known documentary sources as well as the most recent declassified materials, making a single comprehensive resource for primary substantive research on the Vietnam conflict. The principal focus of this collection is on the period of the Vietnam War between 1961 and 1968.

 

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U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, Part II: 1969-1975

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Description:

This is the most important compilation of documents available on the final phase of the Vietnam War. Incorporating newly released documents, virtually all previously classified, it covers all the major issues from the period, including diplomatic, military, and intelligence aspects of the Vietnam war during the period of the Nixon and Ford administrations.

 

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U.S. Policy Toward Iran: From the Revolution to the Nuclear Accord, 1979-2015

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Description:

Since the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah in 1979 and the subsequent hostage crisis, Iran has widely been considered a pariah state and a continuous challenge - not to say threat - to the United States. Yet, every American president has at some point sought to establish ties with the Islamic Republic. This collection traces the arc of this unusual relationship from among its darkest points - the 1979 embassy seizure, the 1983 Beirut bombings, the 1980s U.S. tilt toward Iraq, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, 9/11 and its aftermath, President Bush's 2002 Axis of Evil Speech, the resurgence of hard-line policies under President Ahmadinejad, and the fears over Iran's nuclear program - to the improbable signing of the controversial nuclear accord in 2015. The continuing relevance of U.S.-Iran relations and the issues documented here will make this collection a vital resource for scholars and students for the foreseeable future.

 

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Access information: Freely available
Description: From the United States Patent and Trademark Office. PDF images for all USA patents from 1790 onwards. Also full-text and PDF images of applications. Searches are limited to patent numbers and/or classification codes for pre-1976 patents.
  Currently (July 2014), the full text search of multiple international patent collections covers just Chinese patent documentation from the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People’s Republic of China. Includes full text Chinese patents, English machine translations and full document images.
  Records of active and inactive trademarks registered with the USPTO. Includes applications.