EBSCO is first aggregator to implement Ringgold ID

Ipswich, Mass. Ringgold Identifier to Provide Timely Information for Usage Reports.

A new agreement between EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) and Ringgold announces the implementation of the Ringgold Institutional Identifier within EBSCOhost databases-supplying the Identifier to publishers with their usage reports. By implementing the Ringgold Identifier, EBSCO will be able to provide their publisher clients with accurate and timely reporting, and immediate integration of this information into their internal systems.

The Ringgold Identifier uniquely identifies 155,000 institutional entities and is currently used by over 40 academic publishers to organize their customer data, prepare quotations for licenses and deals, and also for market analysis. The Ringgold Identifier is important in all areas of data exchange in the e-resources supply chain and the National Standards Information Organization (NISO) supports a working group tasked with the goal of creating a national standard for institutional identification.

Ringgold’s VP of Marketing, Research and Development, Helen Henderson, acts as consultant to this NISO I2 Working Group on Institutional Identifiers. She says the group is establishing standards for applications in e-resource publishing, e-learning, institutional repositories, and library management systems. “In the absence of a formal standard, we have been encouraging publishers and other vendors to adopt the Ringgold Identifier to allow accurate and efficient communication between the various players in the supply chain.”

EBSCO Publishing Vice President of Publisher Relations, Melissa D’Amato says, “EBSCO is committed to providing our publisher partners with valuable customer usage reports. Offering the Ringgold Identifier will allow our publisher partners to immediately integrate this information into their own internal systems, a process that until now was manual. This information will be available to publishers in their quarterly reports beginning 2010.” Ringgold works with other publisher services companies and consultants, including software and service providers such as DataSalon (www.datasalon.com), Ingenta (www.ingenta.com) and Thomson Reuters (www.thomsonreuters.com). EBSCO Publishing provides nearly 300 full-text and secondary databases to libraries around the world.

For more information, please contact:

– Kathleen McEvoy, Public Relations Manager, EBSCO Publishing, (800) 653-2726 ext. 2594 kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

– Helen Henderson – helen@ringgold.com +1 (352) 436 4131

About EBSCO Publishing

EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database aggregator, offering a suite of nearly 300 full-text and secondary research databases. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). The company’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Academic Search, Business Source, CINAHL, DynaMed, Literary Reference Center, MasterFILE, NoveList, SocINDEX and SPORTDiscus as well as dozens of leading licensed databases such as ATLA Religion Database, EconLit, INSPEC, MEDLINE, MLA International Bibliography, The Philosopher’s Index, PsycARTICLES and PsycINFO. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world. For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com. EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States. www.ebscohost.com

About Ringgold

Ringgold is based in Beaverton, Oregon, Crystal River, Florida, and Bristol, England. Its mission is to help publishers and software vendors improve their marketing and reduce their costs in supplying products and services within the information industry. Ringgold’s two branded services are OpenIdentify – providing unique identification of organizations subscribing to electronic journals, and OpenRFP – providing an online eProcurement system where software vendors present functions to libraries that use the information for creating RFPs or requests for tender. www.ringgold.com