Grey is the new black:
unpublished fieldwork reports online
Reliable access to unpublished research is at the core of many of our activities. Previous issues of ADS NEWS have reported electronic access to theses, access to out-of-print volumes and many projects that support research with finding aids for obscure publications and archives. Here Catherine Hardman describes the latest of these developments: the Grey Literature Library.
As many of you will be aware, a new collection of Unpublished Fieldwork Reports - better known as the Grey Literature Library - was launched in February 2005. We were able to launch the library by bringing together 177 grey literature reports, many deposited with us over a number of years and representing a wide range of archaeological research. A large number of the reports originally came from the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) archive, many others were deposited by the late Chris Currie as a result of developer-led fieldwork and as part of his research on the Garden Archaeology Project.
Since the launch we have seen a steady increase in the number of reports submitted through the use of the OASIS form which was rolled out in England in April 2004. Use of the form by units and HERs is increasing, with over 1,000 forms being completed in the first year. At the time of writing the total number of grey literature reports available stands at 329. A batch of reports will be released once a month from now on, so we expect the total to climb steadily.
We suspected that the Grey Literature Library would be popular because it provides access to the full text of the documents it supplies. Experience, and the recent HEIRNET survey (page 7), show that while researchers value bibliographies and finding aids, they are only fully satisfied when they can get electronic access to the whole content of a report. We received a positive response from across the archaeological community and from as far afield as Australia and the United States. What did come as a bit of a surprise was the unprecedented number of offers to deposit `back issues'.
Flint scatters: a fitting metaphor for grey literature? Image taken from the Sandway Road Excavations undertaken by Wessex Archaeology on behalf of Union Railways (South) Ltd.
These welcome offers have caused us to think long and hard about how to accommodate this demand most cost effectively. We are therefore hatching plans to investigate how this can be achieved, working closely with existing partners. We hope to look into how best to upload grey literature in bulk.We will explore different ways of depositing reports. For example we could provide a shorter version of the OASIS form specifically to create metadata for the library, or deploy emerging tools such as MIDAS XML, part of the FISH Interoperability Toolkit.
So while the Grey Literature Library is growing slowly, we hope that during the course of the next 18 months you should start to notice a significant increase in numbers, all the more to use as part of our everyday research.
Catherine Hardman
csh3@york.ac.uk
To see the Grey Literature Library point your browser at:
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/library/greylit/
The OASIS Project, including data tool is online at:
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/oasis/
