This month’s Ringgold Bulletin has the first of what we plan to be a regular feature ‘Spotlight On’ where we give you some background information about a country and introduce you to our key researcher for that area. India is our country this month and we would be interested to know which countries you would like to see included in this feature.

Spotlight on … India

With more than one billion people, India is the second most populous country in the world accounting for 17% of the world’s population. Following independence, India has pursued a policy of planned economic development until the early 1990s, when it shifted to structural adjustment policies and liberalization. Subsequently, the Indian economy grew at a fast rate though concerns on equity and poverty persist. The country has recently become one of the world’s fastest growing economies with an average growth rate of eight percent over the past three years.

It has emerged as a global player in several areas, including information technology, business process outsourcing, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals. The demographic profile of India is changing with an ageing population. The subcontinent is characterized by large diversities in geographical regions, sociocultural groups, and health needs. ( http://www.who.int )

The BBC reports that India, “the world’s largest democracy and second most populous country emerged as a major power in the 1990s. It is militarily strong, has major cultural influence and a fast-growing and powerful economy.”

• The population was recorded as over 1,210,000,000 in the 2011 census
• The United Nations lists the total area as 3,287,263 km2
• The CIA say “In 2010, the Indian economy rebounded robustly from the global financial crisis – in large part because of strong domestic demand – and growth exceeded 8% year-on-year in real terms. Merchandise exports, which account for about 15% of GDP, returned to pre-financial crisis levels.”

The OECD Factbook 2010 states:

• GDP (2008): US $3297.8 Billion
• GDP per capita (2008): US $2,780
• Gross domestic expenditure on R&D as percentage of GDP (2008): 0.88%
• Indian rupees (INR) 49.0201 per US dollar 77.3686 and per GB pound

Meet our researcher

Our researcher Kavita says:

“When working through a file of data provided by a customer we have to keep close eye on all the fields of the addresses carefully to make sure we are allocating the correct department and institution. Sometimes it is hard to spot acronyms used for the institutions. When checking a customer’s data we sometimes find examples when cities and postcodes don’t match. Sometimes we have data with former or old names, where we really had to struggle in retrieving its current /changed name. We try all the possible permutations and combinations for obtaining the information for example by breaking the data into bits and pieces for researching the relevant record. One record I had to match had two different vague addresses!”

As well as India, Kavita also has the language skills to handle records from Pakistan. She has a good knowledge of the structure of academic organisations and can recognise any subtle differences within the 343 universities and 17000 colleges. Whilst we don’t have every educational establishment in our database, we have a growing number.

We find that data from these web sites provides a good starting point for our research on organisations in India.

• National Portal of India – http://india.gov.in
• Department of Education – http://education.nic.in
• http://www.hospitalsinindia.org is a starting point for this complex area of research.

Changes to the Identify Database

241,500 records are now in the Identify Database and we added 6,000 records in September.

The database now has 14,500 records in India, of which over 2,300 have the type of corporate/pharma and 600 are academic/pharma.

If you would like any training in Identify and how to get the most out of the database, please let us know. Contact us on info@ringgold.com and we can discuss your requirements.

CDO update

The Consortium Directory Online‘s update cycle is being coordinated by Stephanie Jones. We’re still adding new entries and if you would like to have a demonstration of the capabilities of this exciting tool, please let us know at info@ringggold.com.

Consortium in India include the large Health Science Library and Information Network with over 575 members and also small ones such as Forum for Resource Sharing in Astronomy with only ten.

Events

We’ve just come back from this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Ringgold customers old and new found it a good opportunity to meet the new faces in the Ringgold team. This year’s book fair was extremely busy so we apologise if you tried to stop by and found us all in deep conversation. We had many interesting meetings and hope to bring you improved services in the future based on feedback received. We are also keeping a keen eye on the developments of identification standards throughout the industry.

Christine Orr will be attending the Charleston Conference on 2nd and 3rd November. If you’d like to make an appointment then contact Christine at christine.orr@ringgold.com.

We will also be attending Online Information in London at the end of November, please contact Laura Cox at info@ringgold.com if you would like to arrange an appointment.

Ringgold User Group update

Our User Group Meeting will be on Monday 28th November 2011, just before Online Information. Booking information will be available shortly.