Conference Reports

Grey Literature '99
October 4-5, 1999

Patricia T. Viele
Senior Assistant Physical Sciences Librarian
Edna McConnell Clark Physical Sciences Library
Cornell University
ptv1@cornell.edu

The Grey Literature '99 Conference was held at the Kellogg Conference Center on the campus of Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. Approximately 100 people from more than 20 countries attended. It was a very intense program with working lunches. A chronological list of sessions that I attended follows, and I have included URLs for sites that I feel are worth a look. The program book has abstracts for all of the papers presented, and if you would like to look at that or have any other questions, feel free to contact me. The conference proceedings will be published later.

OPENING SESSION

Chairperson: Dr. Dominic J. Farace, GreyNet Grey Literature Network Service
The Internet and the Socio-Structural Change of Informal Scientific Communication Helmut M. Artus, InformationsZentrum Sozialwissenschaften, IZ
Grey Literature: Plausible Applications for Distance Education Practices Julia Gelfand, University of California, Irvine
Grey Literature and Library and Information Studies (LIS): A Global Perspective Prof. L Olatokumbo Aina, University of Botswana, UB: A survey of LISA [1998] yielded 79 publications that mentioned grey literature. Collection development was the #1 topic for these articles, which appeared in a wide variety of sources.

PLENARY SESSION ONE

Global Assessment of Grey Literature: A Brave New World of Topics, Formats, and Uses

Graduate School Perspectives Gail McMillan, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, VT

Since January 1, 1997 PhD theses have been submitted electronically at Virginia Tech. 40% of the authors impose no limits to access to their theses. 42% of the authors had published articles with commercial publishers with no problems regarding copyright, etc.

They maintain a page with frequently asked questions, etc: ETD Electronic Theses and Dissertation Initiative
http://etd.vt.edu/

International Transportation Literature : An Analysis of Citation Patterns, Availability and Research Implications for the Transportation Community Bonnie Anne Osif, Pennsylvania State University ; Pennsylvania Transportation Institute

Dr. Ofsif traveled to 11 centers worldwide to examine how the grey literature of transportation was handled. She found that the return rate for interlibrary loan requests for documents was only 33%, as opposed to the usual 80% rate of return.

By January, there will be full text reports from the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute available at this site. You will be able to link from their online catalog to the full text documents.

http://www.pti.psu.edu/library/index.html

A Profile of Grey Literature Producers in the Field of Safety and Health at Workplaces in Italy : Results of a Sample Survey by Angela Aceti, Maria Castriotta, Rosa Di Cesare and Daniela Luzi, Istituto Superiore per la Prevenzione e la Sicurezza del Lavoro, ISPESL; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, CNR; Istituto di Studi sulla Ricerca e Documentazione Scientifica, ISRDS

There were no established channels for exchange of documents regarding occupational health and safety in Italy, and most of the documents were not cataloged. A web page was established to facilitate the exchange of information. My Italian language skills are non-existent. For those of you who read Italian, here is the URL: http://www.isrds.rm.cnr.it/

PLENARY SESSION TWO

Publishing and Archiving Electronic Grey Literature: From Production to Full-Text Storage, Retrieval and Distribution

Preserving the Pyramid of Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Using Buckets by Michael L. Nelson and Kurt Maly, NASA Langley Research Center, LaRC; Old Dominion University ; Department of Computer Science, ODU

Michael has devised a scheme [buckets] to organize all the pieces of a project, whatever the format. [i.e. data sets, text, ] For more information, see:

http://home.larc.nasa.gov/~mln/ [Note: Unable to connect 1/14/03]

An Architecture for Grey Literature in a R&D Context by Keith G. Jeffery, Central Laboratory of the Research Councils ; Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

Dr. Jeffery feels that Dublin CORE is insufficient. There should be more detailed descriptions added. This database has many searchable fields.

http://www.clrc.ac.uk/ [Note: Link moved; URL changed 3/11/01 by ald]

Grey Literature in Energy : a Shifting Paradigm by Deborah E. Cutler, Office of Scientific & Technical Information, OSTI, U.S. Department of Energy, DOE

Link Managers for Grey Literature by Jens Vigen, The European Centre for Higher Energy Physics, CERN

CERN receives about 200 documents each day. "Go Direct" runs a comparison between documents received and databases such as INSPEC and CARL to find the correct citation. "Go Direct" automatically creates a link between the citation and the full text.

PLENARY SESSION THREE

Copyright and Grey Literature: Authorship, Ownership, and Property Rights

Black and White or making you see Red : Copyrights and Grey Literature in a Global Context Graham P. Cornish [read by Andrew Smith], International Federation of Library Associations and Documentation, IFLA Office for International Lending

Grey Copyrights for Grey Literature : National Assumptions, International Rights Michael S. Seadle, Michigan State University

Michael gave 3 examples of various attitudes toward copyright:

Black Panther leaflets for which they never registered a copyright
Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, which was copyrighted after it had been distributed. The copyright was later revoked as the result of a lawsuit.
The web site "Why You Should Fall Down on Your Knees and Worship a Librarian", which was clearly copyrighted, but redistributed without the author's permission.

Intellectual property on the move: Grey literature Some Observations and Authors Rights in an Electronic Environment Cees de Blaaij, University of Amsterdam, UvA ; Institute for Information Law, IVIR

Author suggests a "grid" of levels of permissions. The range would be from "always ask" to "no restrictions". This is matched to a range of uses from "personal use" to "web use."

The Application of Electronic Copyright Management Systems (ECMS) to Grey Literature Dave Davis, Copyright Clearance Center, CCC

Management of "bundled permissions" in an electronic environment is very complex. A novel may become a movie which then has a soundtrack produced.... The current system closely resembles a Bumble Ball.

Breakout Session [Monday]

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT OF GREY LITERATURE

International Affairs Research and the Web Sean S. Costigan, Columbia International Affairs Online, Columbia University Press

Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) is designed to be the most comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs. It publishes a wide range of scholarship from 1991 on that includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, and proceedings from conferences. Each section of CIAO is updated with new material on a regular schedule. Working papers are augmented every month, as are conference proceedings. Links and resources, the schedule of events and the response files are updated weekly. Subscription: $595/year

http://www.ciaonet.org/about.html [Note: Link moved; URL changed 3/11/01, 1/14/03 by ald]

INIST : Tracking Grey Literature in a Changing Context Joachim Schöpfel, Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, INIST-CNRS

Issues in Distribution of Grey Literature: Experience of the Japan Documentation Center Ichiko T. Morita, The Library of Congress, LC ; Japan Documentation Center, JDC

Breakout Session [Tuesday]

APPLICATIONS AND USES OF GREY LITERATURE
Andrew Smith, EAGLE, European Association for Grey Literature Exploitation

How do Various Fugitive Literature Searching Methods Impact the Comprehensiveness of the Literature Uncovered for the Systematic Review? Diane Helmer and Isabelle Savoie University of British Columbia; BC Office of Health Technology Assessment

The authors compared search results for two medical topics [acupuncture and lipid lowering] from standard database searches and grey literature searches. 40% of the information on acupuncture came from grey literature sources, probably because it is less mainstream. The most surprising aspect was that 30% of the material found in grey literature was also in the standard indexes, but did not show up. The authors felt it was an indexing problem. The next step will be to evaluate the results.

Many of the reports of the BC Office of Health Technology Assessment are available full text on the web: http://www.chspr.ubc.ca/

Directory Database of Research and Development Activities (ReaD) by Hiroyuki Sato, Kenshou Nakagawa and Yoshiyuki Maeda, Japan Science and Technology Corporation, JST

http://read.jst.go.jp/EN/

Towards the integration of information on Grey Literature : A Case Study Rosa Di Cesare and Gianni Lazzari, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, CNR; Biblioteca Centrale, Biblioteca della Camera dei Deputati

Description of an effort to consult with the producers of grey literature, many of them government agencies, to make the literature more accessible.

Closing Session: Reports from the Working Groups

Lunch time was used to discuss various topics. I chose collection development.

VENDORS

National Library of Education has introduced the Gateway for Educational Materials.

http://www.thegateway.org/

Searchable by keywords or by subject, searches lead to a mixture of URLs, fulltext lesson plans and sources for free educational software.

Japanese Science and Technology Corporation has a web page called ReaD which helps to identify Japanese technical reports.

http://read.jst.go.jp/EN/

You can search by researcher, subject or institute.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA STI Products and Services.

http://netsrv.casi.sti.nasa.gov/

One piece of this, CASI Technical report Server, is on CU Library Gateway. The URL above will take you to a page that gives you easy access to other web pages, i.e., NIX, the NASA Image Exchange.

EAGLE European Association for Grey Literature Exploitation has a database called SIGLE SYSTEM FOR INFORMATION ON GREY LITERATURE IN EUROPE

http://www.kb.nl/infolev/eagle/frames.htm [Note: Link moved; URL changed 1/14/03 by ald]

MCB University Press

http://www.mcb.co.uk/

GreyNet Grey Literature Network Service proposes the GL-Compendium -- a net-based directory of Grey Literature collections

Streamnet is an interesting example of how to make grey literature readily available. The web site combines online data sets with maps and full text government agency reports.

http://www.streamnet.org/

We welcome your comments about this article. Please fill out this form for possible inclusion in a future issue.