The Consortium Directory Goes Online

["Laura Cox" <laura.cox@frontlinegms.com>]

30th September 2010, Towcester, UK, Beaverton, Oregon and Crystal 
River, Florida, USA

The Consortium Directory, originally published by Frontline GMS 
Ltd <http://www.frontlinegms.com/>  will become available as an 
online database in partnership with Ringgold 
<http://www.ringgold.com>  Inc, creating a unique resource for 
the information industry.

The new Directory, renamed the Consortium Directory Online (CDO), 
is the most comprehensive directory of the library consortium 
market available, will include over 600 library consortia in 100 
countries.  It will include fully updated profiles of the 
consortia included in both Ringgold's Identify database and 
Frontline's Consortium Purchasing Directory, plus many new 
consortia.

The Consortium Directory Online (CDO) can be fully integrated 
with Ringgold's Identify database.  The inclusion of Ringgold 
<http://www.ringgold.com/products_identify.html>  Identifiers for 
the member institutions, consortia themselves and for the 
publishers and vendors licensing to the consortium, will make it 
searchable in a wide variety of manners.  Users will be able to 
search for consortia by name, region or country, by specific 
institutional member or publisher licensed, and by consortium 
type, membership type and subject speciality.  They can download 
search results, and user-defined data into PDF or Excel.

Profiles of consortia in the CDO will contain full contact 
information and member lists, plus publishers licensed, and a 
wealth of background information, including information about 
licensing criteria and the consortium structure.

Laura Cox, Managing Director of Frontline said: "Bringing 
together these two products has created a unique resource 
enabling intuitive search and browse functions across an 
unmatched number of library consortia operating in all regions of 
the world.  In taking the Directory online, we are able to offer 
an unrivalled resource for publishers and vendors involved in, or 
wishing to start, licensing online content and services to 
library consortia."

Helen Henderson, Ringgold's VP of Marketing, Research and 
Development said: "This new consortium resource enhances the 
Ringgold Identify services for any publisher, and particularly 
for those publishers now matching their institutional subscribers 
to Ringgold identifiers. "

Available on subscription, the Consortium Directory Online will 
be continually updated with consortium changes and mergers, new 
information, and new consortia as they emerge.

Demonstrations will be available from Ringgold's stand at the 
Frankfurt Book Fair, Hall 4.2, N448, where we will also be 
offering a pre-order discount. The CDO will be fully available in 
early 2011.

For further information please contact directory@frontlinegms.com

About Ringgold

More than 40 publishers currently use Ringgold's database and its 
related services to organise their customer data, prepare 
quotations for licenses and deals, and also for market analysis. 
Ringgold partners with other publisher services companies and 
consultants, including software and service providers such as 
DataSalon, Ingenta and Thomson Reuters.

Helen Henderson, Ringgold's VP of Marketing, Research and 
Development, acts as consultant to the National Standards 
Information Organization (NISO) I2 Working Group on Institutional 
Identifiers, which is establishing an identifier standard for 
applications in e-resource publishing, e-learning, institutional 
repositories, and library management systems.

About Frontline

Frontline GMS was set up by Laura Cox in 2004 and provides 
marketing, promotion and sales consultancy services to the 
academic and professional publishing industry.  Frontline 
specialises in advising publishers, vendors and intermediaries in 
several areas, specifically marketing strategy, PR, negotiating 
with library consortia, setting pricing and business models, 
using and analysing subscription, customer and usage data and 
other operational issues.  Frontline also undertakes major 
research projects, and provides PR, consortia negotiation and 
data analysis.