GreyWorks 2010Transparency Governs the Grey Landscape

Summer Workshop on Grey LiteratureLibrary of Congress

August 9, 2010

Dr. Dominic Farace, Instructor

MODULES:

1. Introduction to Grey Literature2. Supply-side Grey Literature3. Demand-side Grey Literature4. Future Trends in Grey Literature

GreyWorks 2010 Transparency Governs the Grey Landscape

MODULE ONE:Introduction to Grey Literature

GreyWorks 2010 Transparency Governs the Grey Landscape

Uncontrolled Terms for Grey Literature

• Ephemera• Fringe Literature• Fugitive Literature• Non-conventional literature• Non-published literature• Report Literature

Farace - General

• Research Outputs• Secondary Literature• Small circulation literature• Unconventional Literature• Unpublished Literature• Etcetera

Loose the “So-called”

DefinitionGrey Literature "Information produced and distributed on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body.” (Luxembourg, 1997 and Expanded in New York, 2004)

Farace – General

Celebrating GL Conferences 1993-2003

Accomplishments in Grey Literature

Timeline

Technological

Breakthroughs

Societal Challenges

Weinberg Report - Careers Started for Four Information Professionals

1960s Space Pollution, Smog

Peter Auger - First Edition Reports Literature ... Sources in GL

1970s Video Oil Embargo

Vilma Alberani, Director ISS Ed. ServicesEuropean Association for GL Exploitation

1980s Personal Computer

AIDS

Ulrich Wattenberg - Edited OeuvreJapanese Information in ST&Commerce

1990s Internet Millennium Crisis

Andrei Zemskov, Director NPLS&TRussian-German Digital Archive, RusDML

2000s Mobile Communication

9-11, TerrorismFarace et al., GL5

Producers, Corporate AuthorsExamples:

.gov Parliament, federal agencies, local government, etc.

.edu Colleges, universities, research centers, laboratories, etc.

.com For profit organizations, Ltd., Inc., etc.

.org Associations, Foundations, NGO’s, etc.

Farace – General

Document TypesExamples:

.com annual reports, risk analyses, feasibility studies, etc.

.edu working papers, dissertations, research reports, theses, etc.

.gov country profiles, memoranda, intelligence reports, etc.

Among 100’s of other types of grey literature documents (see, GreySource)

Farace – General

CollectionsExamples:

• Reports, Conferences and Theses, British Library Document Supply Centre http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/atyourdesk/docsupply/collection/rct/

• East European Technical Literature, Department of East European Languageshttp://www.tib.uni-hannover.de/en/special_collections/east_european/

• The Haliburton County Collection, Haliburton County Community Co-operativehttp://www.haliburtoncooperative.on.ca/literature/index.html

• Fuelwood Collection, Forest Policy and Environment Group http://www.eldis.org/go/display/?id=28311&type=Document

Farace – General

DatabasesExamples:

• Italian Grey Literature Database, National Research Council, CNRhttp://www.bice.rm.cnr.it/letteratura_grigia_inglese.htm

• National Archeological Database, National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of Interior http://www.cast.uark.edu/other/nps/nadb/nadb.mul.html

• BELIT Bioethics Literature Database, Washington University Librarieshttp://library.wustl.edu/databases/about/belit.html

• OWL, Ornithological Worldwide Literature, Cornell Lab of Ornithologyhttp://www.birdlit.org/OWL/

Farace – General

RepositoriesExamples:

• CEDA Repository, Earth observation and atmospheric scienceshttp://cedadocs.badc.rl.ac.uk/

• CoRR, Computing Research Repository, Association for Computing Machinery http://arxiv.org/corr/home

• Chester, University of Chester Digital Repositoryhttp://chesterrep.openrepository.com/cdr/

• OpenSIGLE Repository, System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe http://opensigle.inist.fr/handle/10068/697753

Farace – General

“Information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing.” (Luxembourg, 1997)

9,6%13.5%4.8%

72.1%

YesYes, but needs a revisionNoNA

(20) The Luxembourg Convention on Grey Literature still holds

Boekhorst et al., GL6 – Definition

Distribution of respondents to the question:

Is the GL definition from Luxemburg (1997) still valuable?

16,9

10,2

72,9

Yes

No

No answer

Di Cesare et al., GL8 - Definition

(12) Grey literature is best described by the type of document it embodies

6.7%21.2%5.8%

66.3%

YesDependsNoNA

.

The Document LevelThe Document Level

Boekhorst et al., GL6 – Document types

Start

ACTIVITIES

Project proposals

Proposal approved

Elaboration of Project proposal

Evaluation and selection of applications

Project assignment

Project start

Project end

Project execution

DOCUMENTS

Activity plan

Administrative documentation

Project description

Research Report

Research results

Call for proposal

Projects forms

Fig. 1. Main steps of the project lifecycleLuzi et al., CNR

GL5 – Document types

PsyDok: document types

Most PsyDok documents belong to the genre Grey Literature.

Document types: diploma and master theses, dissertations, professorial dissertations, preprints, teaching material, psychological scales, reports, proceedings etc.

Monographs, bookchapters, journals and articles from journals may be published as well.

Each document obtains a persistant identifier in form of an Uniform Resource Name (URN) which guarantees citeability.

Herb, GL7 – Document Types

Small local journals

• Level of ‘greyness’

– Journals are generally not rated among grey literature; however,

– Local journals are a specific type of GL because of:• Non-commercial,• Type of publishers,• Limited range of influence

Nahotko, GL9 – Document Types

Documents at CERN

Articles, preprints, thesisCDS at CERN

Books

Journals

Conferences

Archived items

Multimedia items(photos, clips, press cuttings…)

Talks (slides, videos)

500 000

50 000

50 000

20 000

15 000

14 000

2 500

- 650 000 records (Grey Literature > 80%)

- 220 000 full texts

- 350 different collections

-1000 new preprints per week:- 70 % from ArXiv- 5 % from CERN- 25 % from 80 other sources Vesely et al., (CERN)

GL5 – Documents and Collections

(15) Once Grey literature is bibliographically

controlled, it ceases to be grey

8.7%

67.3%

8.7%15.4%

YesDependsNoNA

.

Document LevelDocument Level

Boekhorst et al., GL6

Difficulties still have to be overcome on political, social, and economic levels

•Lack of coordination among different institutions•Lack of knowledge of existing systems•Lack of training among librarians•Lack of being used to adopt such technology by

scientists working in some fields of knowledge rather than others

•Lack of funds for involved activities

We need more consensus, interest and collaboration by academic, industrial and commercial organizations

Biagioni et al., GL7

Grey Literature Success StoryAgrar-technology by a small company in East Germany

Key to new technology:a Dissertation in German!

Who loaded it up the net?The University Library!

Lux, GL9 - General