Ringgold is greeting Spring along with several new customers – we can’t think of a better way to start the year! We are very grateful for your support and look forward to continuing our mission to provide the best data, practices, and services possible.
Toward that end, we have successfully completed the final testing phase of our new Identify Online (IDO) interface, and “all’s well”. The new interface continues to draw praise from users and is powered by a now proven technical infrastructure capable of supporting the needs of our customers now and into the future.
One fortuitous by-product of building a new search interface is the new infrastructure. The improvements to our technical stack benefits everything we do, from data handling to the provision of analysis and creating new products and services. We have increased our efficiency, capability, and expanded our degrees of freedom when taking on new challenges. We’re excited to have new tools and look forward to using them to fulfill our commitments to each of you.
Jay Henry, CMO
Getting ready for GDPR
We are well advanced in our preparations for the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Ringgold will be ready when this comes into force on 25th May 2018. Because of the new rules, there will be a need for us to ask some of our contacts to either opt-in to future communications, or provide other guidance with respect to what contact information we hold, and how it may be used. You will see messages from us on this subject in late April.
New customers
We welcome the following new customers:
- IEEE
- OCLC
- EDP Sciences
- SIAM
- BioOne
- Digital Theatre
- Third Iron
Ringgold Webinars for 2018
We are planning two webinars for customers and contacts in early May. The first 500,000 Organizations & Counting: What We’ve Learned will share insights into the changing nature of organizations, what it takes to classify and describe them with precision, and why high-quality data about them is necessary to succeed in this digital age of scholarship, publishing, and research. This webinar will take place on Thursday 3rd May at 8.00 am (PDT), 11.00 am (EDT), 4.00 pm (BST) and 5.00 pm (CEST).
What can you achieve when internal & external data sources are joined together? The second webinar Bringing it All Together: Uniting Data Sources to Reach Your Goals will share ideas and experiences from 15 years of helping clients do just that. From enterprises looking to understand total customer engagement to universities gauging research impact, success stories and examples will be shared that can be leveraged to help advance your goals. This webinar will be held on Thursday 10th May at 8.00 am (PDT), 11.00 am (EDT), 4.00 pm (BST) and 5.00 pm (CEST).
Essential insights: Ringgold presentations at London Book Fair & SSP
Don’t miss these valuable up-coming opportunities to catch Ringgold staff sharing their expertise:
Laura Cox, Ringgold’s President, will chair an ALPSP-run seminar at this year’s London Book Fair. The session Using your Data to Drive Revenue aims to give practical advice about how to generate publishing revenue from your data resources. Join Laura on Tuesday 10 April 13:00-14:00 in The Faculty, located on the Ground Floor, Stand 7A11. Click here for more details about this session >>
Beth Hoskins, Ringgold Sales Development Manager, will be giving a lightning talk at an SSP Regional Event, Scholarly Communications in the Triangle: Key Players & Speed Networking in Durham NC on May 10. More information >>
At the SSP Annual Meeting in Chicago, on Thursday May 31 at 10:30am – 12:00pm, Christine Orr will be chairing Session 1D The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Metadata & Persistent Identifiers Through the Research & Publication Cycle. Challenges & Success Stories. The session will discuss the value that can be realized when metadata and persistent IDs are applied and preserved through all stages of publication, as well as the barriers which are preventing more widespread use of these critical data components. Click here for more details about this session >>
Later that same day at SSP at 2pm Beth Hoskins will be speaking at Session 2E Expanding Your CRM To Your Entire Business. The panel, which also includes NEJM and Digital Science, will focus on how to take advantage of your CRM and make it a powerful hub of your organization. Click here for more details about this session >>
Meet with Ringgold in 2018
Meet with the team at this year’s up-coming industry events:
- UKSG – visit Jay Henry and Diane Cogan at Stand 53
- London Book Fair – Laura Cox will attend
- STM – Christine Orr will attend
- SSP – meet with Jay Henry, Christine Orr or Beth Hoskins at our booth
- VIVO – Beth Hoskins will attend
- SLA – Christine Orr will attend
L-R: Jay Henry, Laura Cox, Beth Hoskins, Diane Cogan, Christine Orr at Frankfurt Book Fair 2017. Get in touch to make an appointment with us at any of the above events.
2017 UK User Group Meetings success
We held a UK User Group meeting in central London in December. The meeting was well attended and we provided an update on new developments and received some very helpful feedback from our customers. Thanks to all who attended our User Group meetings in 2017.
Identify Database API upgraded to version 2.5 and new REST API planned
We upgraded the Identify Database API late last year to include the Open Funder Registry IDs. Version 2.5 of the API (SOAP) is available to all customers. Technical details are available on the Ringgold Support site. Please get in touch if you are not yet using version 2.5 and we will provide you with the new service end-point. We are also planning to release a new REST API in the coming weeks and we will provide full details to all of our customers before the release.
Keeping Identify up-to-date
Our skilled Production Team has added over 6,000 new records to the Identify Database so far in 2018 and updated almost 30,000 existing records. This has included a review of Ringgold ID 27063 – this record has been renamed to Sorbonne Universite and merged with the records for Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Université Paris-Sorbonne and Universite Paris IV. All related records will be updated to reflect the mergers of these French universities. In addition, several other hierarchies have been updated, such as Ringgold ID 6347 Environment and Climate Change Canada, adding additional classifications and hierarchy details.
We have also worked closely with one of our clients to add a significant number of Portuguese records to the Identify Database. And following the introduction of the new Ringgold ‘/library’ Types in 2017 we have been working hard to create new records for all libraries, which were previously held in the database as alternative names. We are pleased to declare that this work is now complete and that the following Alternate Name types have been retired:
- FN LB Former name of Library
- LB Library name
- LB TR Translation of Library name
Enchancing location information
We are enhancing and standardising the location information held within our Identify Database. This is a significant piece of work and the updated information is currently available in Identify Online but is not yet included in the weekly database exports. We will be releasing the enhanced location information via all of our data exports later in the year and we will provide customers with plenty of notice of any forthcoming changes.
Consortium Directory Online update
Recently updated CDO records include Ringgold ID 89610 New England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO), ID 350230 Florida Virtual Campus (FVLC), ID 128554 JISC Collections and, in particular, ID 241193 Saudi Digital Library, which experienced a significant membership increase last year.
Team changes at Ringgold
We’ve made some improvements within Ringgold’s Production and Operations arm. Phil Nicolson, who has been with Ringgold since 2012, has been promoted to Operations Director. Moritz Schick, part of the team for 5 years, moves up from CDO Editor to Quality Control Manager. We are also delighted to welcome three brand new members of staff:
- Shelley Jacobsen, Quality Control Assistant
- Andrea Dvorska, Quality Control Assistant
- Holly Kerin, Administration Assistant
We wish a fond farewell and happy retirement to our friend and colleague Ankie Visschedijk, who has served as Quality Control Manager since Ringgold’s inception.
Easter & Customer Support
Ringgold services will be operating normally over the Easter Holiday weekend, March 30 – April 2, but with reduced staffing levels. Contact support@ringgold.com for assistance. Emails will be dealt with throughout the holiday period, although customers may not hear from their usual contact.
The Identify Database weekly exports will be available as normal over the Easter period, as will Identify Online and Validate, although we cannot guarantee our usual 24-hour turnaround on new Validate records submitted between March 30 – April 2.
Our Customer Support website is available 24/7 at https://support.ringgold.com. Find detailed help and user guides for all of our products and services.