Ringgold continues to enhance and develop the Identify Database in response to feedback from customers, staff and researchers. We have recently introduced new Ringgold Type classifications for schools, publishers, and we are expanding the /library classification.
Schools
In the past, we have included schools within the Academic sector as follows:
- Academic/school – Education establishments teaching to the end of K12, including preschools, kindergarten, nursery school, elementary, primary, middle and high schools and sixth-form colleges.
- Academic/special – Special schools teaching up to K12, 18-years, with special provision for students who are blind, have behavioural issues or any other disability.
We have now decided to create a new sector: School. The two Ringgold Types above will be replaced by these new Ringgold Types:
- School – Education establishments teaching to the end of K12, including preschools, kindergarten, nursery school, elementary, primary, middle and high schools and sixth-form colleges.
- School/special – Special schools teaching up to K12, 18-years, with special provision for students who are blind, have behavioural issues or any other disability.
We feel that this will help with more accurate customer and prospect description and analysis. Please find below a link to the revised Ringgold Types documentation and also to the latest database statistics:
Ringgold Types https://support.ringgold.com/ringgold-types
Ringgold Infographics https://support.ringgold.com/infographics
We will implement this change in Identify Online immediately and in the weekly database exports starting Friday 7th April. School and School/special will also be returned in the API v2.4.
Publishers
We have received many requests to make publishers more discoverable in the Identify Database and in response we have adopted the new Ringgold Type subject: /publisher.
So within each sector, we will have the ‘publisher’ subject, as follows:
- Academic/publisher – university presses
- Corporate/publisher – covers commercial publishers
- Government/publisher – covers central government publishers
- Other/learnedpublisher – covers learned society publishers
- Other/publisher – covers non-profit publishers
We are working on this change now and we hope to complete the work over the coming weeks. You will begin to see the publisher Ringgold Type in database exports from Friday 16th June. They will be returned in the API v2.4 and you will also see them in Identify Online.
Libraries
We have also received many requests to make libraries more discoverable in the Identify Database. In response, we have expanded the coverage of Ringgold Type subject: /library.
So within each sector, we will have the ‘library’ subject, for example:
- Academic/library – existing Ringgold Type
- Corporate/library – new Ringgold Type
- Government/library – existing Ringgold Type
- Health/library – new Ringgold Type
- Hospital/library – new Ringgold Type
- Other/library – existing Ringgold Type
- Public/library – existing Ringgold Type
- School/library – new Ringgold Type
We are working on this change now and we hope to complete the work over the coming weeks. You will begin to see the expanded library Ringgold Types in database exports from Friday 16th June. They will be returned in the API v2.4 and you will also see them in Identify Online. With this change, academic libraries will now have their own Identify Records, and are no longer an Alternative Name for the institution they serve.
Please note this change does not impact our Identify Audit Service policies or processes, and audit clients will see no change in how we allocate Ringgold IDs to your audited records.
Full documentation of the new Ringgold Types can be found here on our Customer Support site: http://support.ringgold.com/ringgold-types/
Please contact us if you have any questions or comments about the developments.