[LINK] FW: Grey literature conference at NLA in October

[Paul Koerbin]

Well, I have no idea what Tom W. is referring to when he says:

"I suggest that librarians should free themselves from being unpaid 
agents of commercial publishers. Librarians could help authors publish 
directly, in the public interest."

One of the principal concerns in what, for convenience sake, we can refer to as 'grey literature' - not actually a term I use everyday as a matter of fact - is who will take some initiative and responsibility for its long term access? In this respect referring to material of some substance that is not produced by commercial publishers or other is useful. The commercial publishers have a monetary interest in maintaining content (perhaps), but there is a hell of a lot of content that comes and goes on the web that is produced and published by organisations or individuals for whom publishing is not their primary purpose. In fact 'grey literature' is essentially what is already (and has been for a long time) the priority focus of the NLA's PANDORA Archive activities.

Researchers have identified a concern about the long term preservation of and access to material that is not the property and asset of commercial publishers because they identify it as being of value. Difficult to access commercial content is another thing. Frankly I don't care what colour literature you call it. But researcher identify a category of material they think is vulnerable and it correlates to material we target for web archiving and they provide a convenient label for it such as 'grey literature' - well fine, that helps us get on the same page.

Apologies if this is an outmoded librarian way of thinking - it just happens to be practical and not theoretical.

Paul


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Dr Paul Koerbin | Manager Web Archiving | National Library of Australia
E: pkoerbin at nla.gov.au | T: (02) 6262 1411