Learning objectives

At the end of this module, you will be able to:

• define the concept of grey literature
• explain the importance of grey literature
• find grey literature using Web-based tools
• find grey literature in Australian libraries
• find grey literature from overseas sources
• locate conference proceedings.

What is grey literature?

The term grey literature refers to research that is either unpublished or has been published in non-commercial form. Examples of grey literature include:

• government reports
• policy statements and issues papers
• conference proceedings
• research reports
• market reports
• working papers.

Professional associations, academics, pressure groups and research institutes are only some of the sources of grey literature. Much grey literature is of high quality, although grey literature has generally not passed through the process of peer review.

The importance of grey literature

Grey literature is often the best source of up-to-date research in specific areas. Another benefit of grey literature is that it is often written in an accessible style, providing a clear, concise introduction to difficult or complex topics.

An increasing amount of grey literature is now available on the Web in Adobe Acrobat (PDF). This means that it is relatively easy to find recent examples of grey literature using a simple Google search. Adding filetype:pdf to the search terms will restrict your results to Adobe Acrobat (PDF) documents. This will increase the number of grey literature items which appear in your search results.

Using Google to find grey literature To demonstrate the usefulness of Google as a tool for finding grey literature, let's find information about copyright and the Internet from Australian sources. Enter the search copyright law Internet filetype:pdf site:.au in the Search box below. Click on Search. How many potentially useful documents did you find on the topic? If you are not sure why the search used this particular syntax, see the page elsewhere on this site on searching the Web.

Law Reform Reports

Law reform bodies are an invaluable source of information on wide range of legal topics. The links below will take you to the publications of Australian law reform bodies.

• Australian Institute of Judicial Administration
• Australian Law Reform Commission
• Judicial Commission of New South Wales
• Judicial Conference of Australia
• Law Council of Australia
• New South Wales Law Reform Commission
• Northern Terrritory Law Reform Committee
• Tasmanian Law Reform Institute
• Queensland Law Reform Commission
• Queensland Legal, Constitutional & Administrative Review Committee
• Victorian Law Reform Commission
• Victorian Parliamentary Law Reform Committee
• Victorian Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee
• Western Australian Law Reform Commission

The Australasian Law Reform Library on the AustLII site provides a searchable database of reports of all law reform bodies in Australia and New Zealand. Although convenient, this database it not comprehensive or always up-to-date.

Other research bodies

Many private and semi-private Australian research institutes publish grey literature in law and related areas. A comprehensive list of Australian law research centres is available from the ALPN site. If you find a research body which looks relevant to your research, go to the Web site and look for a link to publications.

In addition, the module on finding statistical information has a large number of links to bodies providing grey literature which includes statistical material.

Institutional repositories

An increasingly important source of grey literature are the institutional repositories being created by universities world-wide. Most institutional repositories collect grey literature written by academics at their institution.

Web sites that index and collect grey literature are growing in number. The ALA site is a good place to start if you are interested.

Older grey literature

Large libraries often collect grey literature in paper form. Examples are the State Library of NSW or the Australian National Library. You can usually find this material by searching the online catalogue. It is often possible to arrange loans or to purchase copies of such material through the document delivery services at your institutional library.

Finding grey literature overseas

Law reform agencies overseas

Australia is far from unique in having a number of official and semi-official law reform agencies. Such bodies are common in many countries. There are a number of useful tools for finding the grey literature published by such bodies world-wide:

• The Law Reform Database. The Law Reform Database is a free database indexing over 7,000 law reform materials from common law jurisdictions around the world.
• WorldLII Law Reform Project. The World LII Law Reform Project allows you to cross-search databases from the law reform commissions in Australia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, PNG and the United Kingdom. In addition, WorldLII has links to major Commonwealth and Franchophonie law reform commission sites, as well as similar sites in the United States.
• The World Law Reform Collection Jurisdiction and Subject Index. This is a searchable database of law reform body publications. It references titles from 37 separate jurisdictions.

Libraries overseas

By searching the online catalogues of overseas libraries, you can discover new unexpected items of grey literature. The following libraries are particularly useful in this regard:

• Amicus. The Canadian National Catalogue covers not only the items held at the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) but also those found in over 1300 libraries across Canada.
• British Library (BL). The BL is the national library of the United Kingdom.
• Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. It includes a Law Library, which has the world's largest collection of law books and legal resources.
• National Library of New Zealand.

For those interested in international law, foreign-language library catalogues are often indispensable. Some useful starting points include:

• Bibliothèque nationale de France (Bnf). The online catalogue for the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the French national library. Note this link takes you to the English-language interface.
• Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog (KVK). The KVK is a meta-catalogue that allows for simultaneous searching of dozens of German-language library catalogs, among them the union catalogs for Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia and those for higher education institutions in Austria and Switzerland. Includes links to other national and union catalogues across the world. It is therefore an excellent starting point for foreign-language research.
• LibWeb. This site provides links to library catologues world-wide.
• IFLA. The International Federation of University Libraries (IFLA) provides a list of national libraries world-wide.

WorldCat

WorldCat includes the holdings of over 20,000 libraries world-wide. This means that WorldCat includes bibliographic information on tens of thousands of grey literature items. For information on searching WorldCat, see the module on searching library catalogues at eSKILLS Plus.

Costs of grey literature

Most grey literature, however, is free. However, some sources of grey literature, such as market research firms, charge for access to their material. Where there is a charge, don't forget to check first in a source like the Libraries Australia catalogue. You might find that a copy is available in another academic library, and is therefore available for loan.

Evaluating grey literature

The danger of grey literature is that some of the "think tanks" which publish reports and working papers have their own political or social agendas. It is not uncommon for private research institutes to obtain much of their funding from large companies or special-interest groups. For this reason, the objectivity of research reports prepared by such bodies has been called into question. For further information on this point, see the Sourcewatch site in the United States.

Conference proceedings

These can be some of the hardest forms of grey literature to locate. There are, however, ways to deal with the problem. The first step is to read your citation carefully. The citation itself will often give you clues regarding the availability of the paper. Does the citation include the imprint of a publisher, or does it simply list the conference speaker, title, location and date? Citations that begin "paper presented at" do not, in themselves, indicate that proceedings were ever published. Without further details, such citations may indicate simply that the author of the citation was in the audience at the time. Be wary, therefore, of chasing "phantom" papers: presentations that have never been set down in written form.

To determine if a paper exists, follow these steps:

• check the Web. A simple title search in Google might well discover your document in full text.
• contact the speaker. See the advice on finding people elsewhere in the module on networking.
• contact the conference organiser. Conference organisers (such as Law Reform Societies) often collect conference papers for distribution to attendees. In somes cases, the organiser will retain copies of papers, at least for a limited time. A quick Google search will often allow you to find the contact details of the sponsoring information.
• perform a library search. The proceedings of major conferences are often published in book form or as the special issue of a journal. These are often discoverable using a library catalogue search. If, for example, you were searching for the proceedings of the International Conference on Therapeutic Jurisprudence (held in Perth in 2006), a keyword search in the Libraries Australia catalogue on international AND therapeutic AND jurisprudence will tell you that the proceedings are held in two Australian libraries. Unfortunately, published proceedings or special journal issues do not always include all the papers presented at the conference.
• search the journal literature using an appropriate database. Speakers frequently submit conference papers for later publication in a journal or book. Even when a book of conference proceedings are not available, a search of the journal literature may lead you to a later version of the paper.

If you found your citation in a index or database, there is a good chance that the cited paper is readily available. Commerical document suppliers or major libraries (such as the British Library) will collect and sell grey literature items included in indexes and bibliographies. Contact the document delivery staff at your institution's library for assistance.

Summary

This module dealt with the following:

• the concept of grey literature
• the importance of grey literature as a resource for research
• locating grey literature in Australian libraries
• finding grey literature from overseas sources
• finding conference proceedings.