RE: grey literature

[Cecelia Petro <cpetro@dnr.state.md.us>]

grey literature is broadly defined as: "Reports and technical papers produced at all levels by government, academia, business and industry, but which are not controlled by commercial publishing interests." 
For instance, the reports and documents of the Maryland Dept. of Natural Resources that we produce/publish is grey literature.

Despite its importance to researchers, scientists, students, other interested citizens--grey literature is often not collected and/or cataloged in libraries. It is hard to find and hard to access.

There is a U.S. Interagency Grey Literature Working group which uses this definition of grey literature: "foreign or domestic open source material that usually is available through specialized channels and may not enter normal channels or systems of publication, distribution, bibliographic control, or acquisition by booksellers or subscription agents." They however, have a great new website for U.S. Gov. docs, The Grey Lit Network, at: http://www.osti.gov/graylit/

The Maryland DNR is currently working with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to produce a bibliography of Grey Literature on the Chesapeake Bay, together with an initial resource of 50,000 pages of Chesapeake Bay Grey Literature available in full text on the web. Completion of first phase is Sept. 2001.

Regards.