From: Giselle Rawlins <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:23:14 +0100

For immediate release.

11th April 2013 – Beaverton, OR, USA. Ringgold Launches ProtoView. A
single-source of enhanced metadata creation and dissemination to drive
content discovery, use and purchase.

Ringgold is delighted to announce a new service for publishers which
simplifies the process of creating and disseminating comprehensive
metadata for web-scale discovery and Demand-Driven Acquisition.
ProtoView puts quality book, e-book and database information in the
hands of end-users at the point of use and purchase.

ProtoView is a cost effective, single source solution for publishers
to enhance content discoverability. It includes the creation of
standards compliant, enriched and normalized metadata about each title
which is fed directly into the scholarly supply chain, including
discovery services, aggregators, and vendors.

Publishers provide Ringgold with their content, either in print or
online, along with any existing metadata. Ringgold’s professional
writers produce an objective and keyword-rich summary of each title.
Ringgold builds an extensive metadata record from MARC records,
original research, standard identifiers and our authoritative Identify
database. Records are distributed in accepted industry standard
formats to our network of licensees.

All metadata is also provided on ProtoView.com. This fully searchable
website was designed for librarians and patrons to search and browse,
and to set new title alerts according to their interests.

Laura Cox, Chief Marketing Officer of Ringgold said: “We are excited
to announce this new service, which we believe is timely given the
rapidly changing discovery and acquisition environment. Our aim is to
help publishers gain the most from these new landscapes and maximize
exposure to their content. ProtoView has been developed from existing
services acquired in 2012 and reinvented as a next generation
promotional service for scholarly content.”

Ringgold will be launching ProtoView at the London Book Fair, please
drop by stand O660, or contact [log in to unmask] to book an
appointment.

About Ringgold

Ringgold (www.ringgold.com) has created a process for the
identification of institutions and the relationships between
organizations. Each institutional entity has been assigned its own
unique Ringgold ID, which is mapped to the organizational hierarchy
and a range of classification metadata, including consortium
membership.  It also provides services to publishers to enhance the
discovery of scholarly books and e-books. It summarizes the content of
books and provides them along with enhanced standard metadata directly
to a wide range of discovery channels, including a website for
librarians.

Ringgold provides the following main services:

- Identify – a database of over 350,000 organizations with Ringgold
IDs and associated metadata

- CDO – a directory of over 400 library consortia world-wide which
licence online content

- ProtoView – a service for publishers in the enhancement of book and
e-book discovery