TCORE 112 Plankton to Porpoises: organisms of the Puget Sound Waters - Hunt: Grey Literature
How do I find grey literature?
Suggestions
- Search the UW Worldcat Catalog (below) for your term(s) and then limit by government documents (usually found on the left side navigation of the results screen).
- Use a search engine and limit your search by domain (Recommended domain: .gov).
- Use a specialized search engine like science.gov or worldwidescience.org.
Search Libraries Worldwide with UW WorldCat
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UW Worldcat is especially useful when you want to search as broadly as possible for a topic or when you are seeking a relatively rare item that isn't likely to be available at the UW. It also facilitates borrowing books from other libraries. |
What is grey (or gray) literature?
A technical defintion...
"That which is produced on all levels of govenment, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers."
(Fourth International conference on Grey Literature, Washington D.C., October 1999)
Examples of grey literature may include:
Government reports
Conference proceedings
Working papers
Market research reports
Newsletters and/or bulletins
Dissertations & Theses
Policy statements
Examples of why you might use grey literature:
- It may be the only timely information available.
- It may be a body of information that only governments typically collect and report on.
- It may be valuable data/research conducted as part of an academic exercise (dissertation, working papers, etc.).
- It may be a narrow topic with little published information available.
- Hint: If you are running into this issue, you may want to consider revising your topic if peer-reviewed literature is required.