Brian A. Hitson
Associate Director
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
U.S. Department of Energy
Introduction
Opening Remarks
• Wikipedia: "…a body of materials that cannot be found easily through conventional channels such as publishers… "
• " …information that is not searchable or accessible through conventional search engines or subject directories and is not generally produced by commercial publishing organisations." (National Library of Australia)
• Webster's Dictionary: "An achromatic colour between the extremes of black and white."
Defining grey literature - examples
Grey = Deep
Grey literature also used to describe "deep web".
1. What you don't know can hurt you (or, at least, it could help you).
Challenges of grey literature.
Expand on: storage/preservation issues, accessibility, and exponential growth
2. Time = money and delayed progress.
Challenges of grey literature.
Expand on: storage/preservation issues, accessibility, and exponential growth
Federated search drills down to the deep web where scientific databases reside
Surface Web
Deep Web Databases
First Deep Web Search Engine: Science.gov
How federated searching enables better access to grey literature
• Science.gov
• ScienceAccelerator.gov
• E-print Network
• Science Conference Proceedings
• Federal R&D Project Summaries
WorldWideScience.org – makes grey literature from around the world available Background/history of WWS.
• Concept introduced by OSTI Director, Walt Warnick, June 2006, Bethesda, Maryland
• Bilateral U.S.(DOE)/U.K. (British Library) partnership, January 2007, London
• Demonstration of first prototype, June 2007, Nancy, France
• Multilateral governance structure, WorldWideScience Alliance, established, June 2008, Seoul
• Common ingredient: International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI)
• Searches 49 science databases and portals sponsored by governments and national institutions in 54 countries
• Covers scientific literature from over three-fourths of the world's population
• Includes a vast quantity of science (over 375 million pages), much of which is grey literature