As a library student I was taught Helen's definition of grey
literature. The other may be more common as an academic definition.
Susan Knowles
On 07/03/2010, at 9:17 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
Can anyone shed any light on the difference between these two
definitions of "grey literature"? It seems Helen's definition below
(unpublished and unsearchable) is the most common, but Chris's (not
peer-reviewed) seems fairly common on the net too.
Peter Shute
________________________________
From: Helen Larson
Sent: Sunday, 7 March 2010 1:31 PM
To: Peter Ewin; Peter Shute; ? birding-aus
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Grey literature
a late (due to computer malfunction) agreement from an academic
(fisho not birdo).
Grey literature is all that Vogon-esque stuff you cannot find
because it is not 'published' or otherwise available. Usually
consists of reports that are mentioned in PERs and EISs but only a
select few actually get to see.
Wingspan and similar magazines are not grey.
Helen
<')/////==<
________________________________
From: Peter Ewin <>
To: ; ? birding-aus <>
Sent: Fri, 5 March, 2010 7:23:44
Subject: RE: [Birding-Aus] Grey literature
Not certain I want to jump in on this string but I will put my 2
cents in.
I always thought that grey literature was used for documents that
were generally unavailable due to limited publishing. The classic
case is government agencies using internally produced reports or
documents within a document. The document is available to internal
staff but is often difficult (or impossible) to get copies of. May
be changing in these modern days of the internet (and theortetically
much more documentation being made available by government).
Not certain what bearing this has on the grey - I am surprised
people thought it any way offensive. However, I never would have
thought that Wingspan was grey literature either as it was generally
available and published for distribution.
Cheers,
Peter
From: <>
To: <>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2010 05:35:30 +1100
Subject: [Birding-Aus] Grey literature
It seems that Chris Sanderson's reference to non peer reviewed
publications as "grey literature" struck a nerve, with many people
interpreting "grey" as meaning something like "shady". A quick
Googling of the term revealed many pages defining and using the
term, including Wikipedia.
It appears that not only is the term well established and
widespread, but there are actually journals about it (The Grey
Journal, and yes, it's peer reviewed) and a Grey Literature
International Steering Committee (GLISC), "which was established in
2006 after the 7th International Conference on Grey Literature
(GL7)".
One site acknowledges that the term "brings connotations of
bleakness, apathy, indifference, and questionable authority to
mind", but claims it has had its current meaning since the 1920s.
So I guess we can't complain about its use. However, while there
are many sites defining it as Chris does, most have a different
definition. E.g. "information that is not searchable or accessible
through conventional search engines or subject directories and is
not generally produced by commercial publishing organisations".
Can anyone explain why there are two definitions? Is one just a
subset of the other (i.e. all peer reviewed publications are
searchable)? And by the narrower definition, are Wingspan and TBO
grey literature or not? Are they searchable?
Some (grey) references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_literature
http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/topics/372.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/greylitreport_06.html
http://www.glisc.info/
http://www.moyak.com/papers/grey-technical-literature.html
http://www.google.com.au/m/search?q=%22grey+literature%22
Peter Shute
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