Access and Use of Grey Literature in Social Science: Problems and Prospects

Grey Literature is defined by the Harrod’s Librarians glossary as ‘Semi-published material for example reports, internal documents not formally published or available commercially and consequently difficult to trace bibliographically’. Access to such fugitive, invisible, ephemeral micro information is always difficult for research scholars, scientists and faculty members. Acquisition, organization and maintenance of grey documents is one of the toughest tasks for librarians in special libraries. The tracing of those micro documents needs the subject expertise on the part of librarian and his staff. Documentation work has highlighted the importance of these documents and the digital technology facilitates their availability nationally and internationally. Very little work is done on networking the Grey Literature in India. This book is the first of its kind in this area. This book contains six chapters dealing with the access to grey literature. It attempts to provide a model for the grey literature information system at the national level and also discusses the grey literature and the internet. This book is useful for research scholars, teachers, librarians and LIS students in helping them understand the nature and growth of grey literature in various fields and its value in libraries and information centres. The exposition of information is brilliant and the narration is lucid. It is a specialist study and deserves to be kept on the shelves of all types of libraries.