OpenSIGLE, Home to GreyNet’s Research Community and its Grey Literature Collections: Initial Results and a Project Proposal

For the past 15 years, GreyNet has sought to serve researchers and authors in the field of grey literature. To further this end, GreyNet has signed on to the OpenSIGLE repository and in so doing seeks to preserve and make openly available research results originating in the International Conference Series on Grey Literature. GreyNet together with colleagues at INIST-CNRS have designed the format for a metadata record, which encompasses standardized PDF attachments of the authors’ conference preprints, PowerPoint presentations, abstracts and biographical notes. In April 2008, the first test batch containing records from the Eighth International Conference on Grey Literature (GL8, 2006) was uploaded. A few minor problems that were encountered have since been successfully resolved; and, these metadata records and corresponding attachments are now available for search and retrieval in OpenSIGLE. Subsequent record entries will follow continuing with GL7 (2005) down to GL6 (2004) and GL5 (2003). By December 2008, conference records over the past five years including those from GL9 (2007) will be available in OpenSIGLE. For this phase of the project, a budget of 2000 Euro was appropriated to cover the costs of formatting, conversion, and technical editing of the 100 plus records. Records from the earlier four conferences in the GL Series (1993-1999) will require additional image scanning as well as permission from Emerald (the former MCB University Press). Should this be granted not only would the total number of GreyNet records in OpenSIGLE be doubled but GreyNet’s collection would then be comprehensive.