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"I read an article about grey literature called “Grey Literature in Special Libraries: Access and Use” by Sara Ranger, and the sentence that really stood out to me was, “Organizations producing grey literature do not necessarily realize the extent of the audience reading and using their documents” (2005, p. 54). That really rings true to me from the experiences I have had doing this project. Newsletters, reports, and conference proceedings are really important because they are often more quickly updated then published materials, but the problem is that these things are often harder to make accessible to the public."

"Background: Despite the acknowledged promise of developing a public health systems research (PHSR) agenda for emergency preparedness, there has been no systematic review of the literature in this area. The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic literature review in order to identify and characterize the PHSR literature produced in the U.S. in the past 11 years in the field of public health emergency preparedness."

There are two critical dimensions to the health search challenge:
1. Providing rich meaningful information to empower consumers and patients; and
2. Doing so by combining an array of new technologies to support search in knowledge-intensive domains.

This is the first of a two part series on how the boundaries of search are being pushed beyond the familiar Google style broad Web search. Tomorrow I will discuss real time search. I recently spoke with Eric Rogge of Exalead about how search is playing an expanded role for enterprises inside and outside the firewall. He mentioned that the major players such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are continuing their battle for broad based Web search. Microsoft has now brought Bing into play in this market.

Note the reference to "gray literature": "The cash incentive program (which is effective in developing countries) for quality publications also introduced a reliable and objective method of evaluating research performance. Foremost is the use of peer-reviewed international journals as the standard for research publications; in particular, journals indexed by Thomson ISI. The incentive also reduced the waste in research funds but generate only gray literature. Such reduction in waste would justify a budget increase."

"To help librarians and researchers discover and find grey literature, I'm sharing a few resources today that can help with your search."

Over the past 15 years, Grey Literature has developed from a millennium movement to a well defined field in information studies. The needs and demands of information society are in constant state of change and flux. To a great extent, grey literature is the cause of this. Grey Literature has grown exponentially in relation to commercially published literature and now challenges informational professionals in all sectors of government, academics, business and industry. Summer Workshops on this subject first conducted at the Library of Congress in May 2009. The next one will be held on July 2nd, 2009, at the KNAW Conference Center in Amsterdam.

Purpose: "This article investigates the impact of the open archive initiative on the document supply of grey literature. "

INTRO: The National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health (NCCDH) focuses on the social and economic factors that influence the health of Canadians. Our mission is to engage public health practitioners, policy-makers and researchers so as to better include knowledge about the social determinants of health in policy and public health practice decisions that will achieve social justice and health for all.

INTRO: This is a web site designed to provide quality research evidence to public health decision makers, saving you time by searching, screening, and rating the systematic review evidence to compile it in a free, searchable online registry: health-evidence.ca. Findings of a research project funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research demonstrated a need for a reliable source of review evidence that decision makers in public health could access and use easily. You can read more about studies and ongoing research elsewhere on the site and you can also read more about the process that each review must pass through before being posted to health-evidence.ca.

SUMMARY: Informants expressed similar needs for improved information access including single portal access with a good search engine; automatic notification regarding newly available information; access to best practice information in many areas of interest that extend beyond biomedical subject matter; improved access to grey literature as well as to more systematic reviews, summaries, and full-text articles; better methods for indexing, filtering, and searching for information; and effective ways to archive information accessed. Informants expressed a preference for improving systems with which they were already familiar such as PubMed and listservs rather than introducing new systems of information organization and delivery. A hypothetical ideal model for information organization and delivery was developed based on informants' stated information needs and preferred means of delivery. Features of the model were endorsed by the subjects who reviewed it.

This is the html version of the file: http://health-evidence.ca/downloads/Dobbins2006_Grey_Literature_Project_Report.pdf.

EXEC SUMM:

A comprehensive review of the knowledge base related to the effectiveness of interventions is essential to making evidence-based practice, program and policy decisions in public health, health promotion, and population health. Evidence synthesis is the process of bringing together the results of individual research studies in order to summarize the current state of the evidence for public health decision makers (clinicians, managers, and policy makers) and identifying key evidence gaps relating to the clinical question. Evidence syntheses include systematic reviews, meta-analyses, narrative literature reviews, and clinical and best practice guidelines. These syntheses vary in their rigour and therefore the extent to which they should be used to guide practice, program, and policy decisions.

Maureen Dobbins joined the School of Nursing in 1999 and is currently a tenured Associate Professor with a cross appointment with Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and School of Rehabilitation Sciences. Maureen is also a career scientist funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health.

Also:

Dobbins, M., Robeson, P, DesMueles , M., Jentha, N (2008). A methodology for searching the grey literature for effectiveness evidence syntheses related to public health: A report from Canada. Health Inform Journal, 17(1): 9-12.

GL9, Ninth International Conference on Grey Literature

ABSTRACT: "Problem: Public health professionals rely heavily on resources that are often only available in grey literature format. However, while grey literature may contain comprehensive, concrete, and up-to-date information, the fugitive nature of this material makes access problematic. The public health community needs a knowledge management repository of grey literature and tools for easy and rapid access, so time spent searching across and through materials can be reduced. Goal: Design a customizable prototype public health knowledge management repository system and end-user interface with optimal interoperability and the capability to provide timely access to public health information in support of decision making at the point and time of need. Specification of an appropriate metadata schema, which identifies in a standardized way the elements needed to describe a resource, are a critical part of the system. The long-term goal is a system that delivers answers to public health questions, not a list of pointers to resources that may or may not contain information to answer those questions Evaluation Procedure: We are utilizing user needs analysis, user profiling, and resource assessment to inform understanding the information needs of public health professionals in the context of their everyday workflow and enable identification of key grey literature knowledge resources for incorporation into the knowledge management system. Rapid prototyping is being used to translate these findings into system specifications and interface design of a small-scale prototype system. The prototype defines system components and interactivity both among components and with relevant external knowledge resources—for example, the New York Academy of Medicine's Grey Literature collection, web resources from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health materials, etc. The collection of materials will be organized utilizing resource metadata (high level formal, standards-based descriptions of documents) to improve location of relevant grey literature and other information sources. Results: Testing and evaluation will result in enhancements to the user interface, information resources, presentation of those resources, etc. We also anticipate that the metadata schema employed in a public health knowledge management system will improve the efficacy and efficiency of locating answers to public health questions from the grey literature. Conclusions: As the amount and breadth of public health information resources continue to expand it is critical that we find ways to provide direct access to the contents of these rich and complex resources. We believe that a public health grey literature knowledge management system with a collection of resources driven by the information needs of public health practitioners and organized using an appropriate metadata scheme will reduce time spent searching across and through materials, enhance public health decision making and ultimately improve the overall quality of public health services."

GL8, Eighth International Conference on Grey Literature

GL7, Seventh International Conference on Grey Literature