Lightening grey literature: Making the invisible visible

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Lightening grey literature:Making the invisible visibleC.A. Sidwell a , P.A.S. Needham b & J.D. Harringtonc

a Assistant Librarian, Kings Norton Library ,Cranfield University , Cranfield, Bedfordshire,MK43 0AL, UK E-mail:b MAGiC Research Officer, Kings Norton Library ,Cranfield University , Cranfield, Bedfordshire,MK43 0AL, UK E-mail:c Information Services Manager, Kings NortonLibrary , Cranfield University , Cranfield,Bedfordshire, MK43 OAL, UK E-mail:Published online: 15 Oct 2009.

To cite this article: C.A. Sidwell , P.A.S. Needham & J.D. Harrington (2000)Lightening grey literature: Making the invisible visible, New Review of InformationNetworking, 6:1, 121-135, DOI: 10.1080/13614570009516956

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Lightening grey literature: making theinvisible visible

C.A. SidwellAssistant Librarian, Kings Norton Library, Cranfield University,Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UKe-mail: [email protected]

P.A.S. NeedhamMAGiC Research Officer, Kings Norton Library, Cranfield University,Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UKe-mail: [email protected]

and

J.D. HarringtonInformation Services Manager, Kings Norton Library, CranfieldUniversity, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 OAL, UKe-mail: [email protected]

Technical reports are an important and unique source of engineering information. This has beenrecognised in the US where federal technical reports are freely available via the Internet. UKreports are hard to identify, locate and obtain. Within the context of new initiatives promotingcross-sectoral partnership and collaboration, the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP)and British Library Co-operation and Partnership Programme (BLCCP) have funded the MAGiCproject. MAGiC aims to provide the UK engineering community with a greater awareness of, andaccess to, key collections of technical reports by: mapping UK report collections; developing amethodology for prioritising digitisation of reports; providing an entry point to search and browsewidely distributed resources; developing a core electronic archive of engineering report literature;evaluating the feasibility of creating a commercial service based on the supply of electronicdocuments. An exposition of work in progress is given with a projection of how the demonstratorservice will operate. A call for help with the project in locating report collections within academia,industry, and government, and contact details, are given.

WHAT IS GREY LITERATURE?

Grey literature is information which is not conventionallypublished and is therefore not readily available through theusual channels of booksellers and subscription agents. Typical

examples of grey literature include theses, technical reports, conference

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proceedings, trade literature and official documents. Within theengineering sector, one of the largest and most important types of greyliterature is the technical report.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TECHNICAL REPORTSThe vast majority of engineering research, technology acquisition anddevelopment address a particular need or problem. The results of thisresearch are disseminated, if at all, through journal articles, conferencepapers and technical reports. Journal articles and conference papers givea compressed summary of the work undertaken and often present a shopwindow for the technical expertise or competence of the author'sorganisation or company, and hence put a positive gloss on the finalresults. They do not give a blow-by-blow account of exactly how theresults were arrived at, or the mistakes that were made along the way.Sometimes the information is so compressed as to make understandingor validation difficult.

Technical reports may contain experimental procedure, production data,specifications, standards, operating plans, drawings and/or raw results(1). Importantly, they will set out the conclusions andrecommendations to come from the research, and include all aspects ofthe research, including those parts that failed. This means that theinformation is very specific, addressing a particular problem, and veryrich in experimental detail. A large proportion of report informationwill never be formally published as a journal article or within a book.

Within many organisations the report is the primary means of technicalcommunication, as it is cheap and quick to produce. Reports must bedetailed enough to satisfy the requirements of the funder or contractorof the research, and their detailed nature is their greatest strength as aninformation source. Once the report has been circulated within theorganisation, if appropriate, it is then distributed to a wider audience,without peer-review or editing. Of course, some reports will be held inconfidence if there are military or commercial restraints.

For an engineer who has specific queries about experimental method,who wants to know about the latest developments in a field or whoneeds to disseminate results promptly, the report is invaluable.Research in 1994 by Blagden et al. showed that 40% of respondentsused reports as an information source, second only to books (2).

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OBSTACLES TO USING TECHNICAL REPORTSAs the organisation producing the reports effectively controls theirdistribution, they can be difficult to obtain. The concept ofcollaboration and sharing has less support in a commercial organisationthan in government or academic institutions. Reports can be subject toembargo until the company decides the information cannot be used forcommercial gain by its competitors.

Reports are not subject to rigorous bibliographic control, and awarenessof the available report literature is poor. From the perspective of theengineer, identifying a report on a particular topic can be very laboriousas there are few abstracting and indexing services focussing on reportliterature. Obtaining a report in the UK can also be very difficult if theBritish Library does not hold the item. Identifying holdings of otherlibraries is hard, as library report collections are generally incompleteand inconsistently catalogued. Many do not contain title-levelinformation, making searches for subject-based information impossible.

Studies have shown that engineers are reluctant to use formalinformation sources such as databases (3). Often their task involvesproblem solving and so their information seeking behaviour focuses ondiscussion with colleagues, which is 'information rich' in terms ofsynthesis and experience (4). Formal sources are in comparison'information poor', often requiring additional input or modificationbefore the information is usable. Many engineers may not realise that areport will hold the answers they need. Even if this need is recognised,the obstacles to identifying and obtaining reports are discouraging.

There have been attempts to increase the accessibility and supply ofreport literature in Europe with the EAGLE/SIGLE service, but withmore success in the US, where reports are made freely available via theInternet.

EAGLE/SIGLE - a European initiativeThe major European project is SIGLE (System for Information on GreyLiterature in Europe), which is co-ordinated by EAGLE (EuropeanAssociation for Grey Literature Exploitation) (5). SIGLE's aim is toprovide access to European grey literature, which it does by means of anetwork of national centres, one of which is the BLDSC (The BritishLibrary Document Supply Centre) (6). Each centre is responsible for


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collecting grey literature in their own country and providingbibliographic details for entry into the SIGLE database, which nowcomprises about 630,000 citations (7). Over 86,000 of these citationsrefer to reports from the UK. Reports, dissertations, and other greyliterature found in SIGLE can be ordered from the source indicated ineach record.

RTO/US initiatives

Organisations in the US have been much more effective in makingreport literature accessible. The government has a responsibility todisseminate the results of federally sponsored research as broadly aspossible as a public good. Recognising the Internet as a powerfulmeans to increase dissemination, the US government fundeddigitisation projects such as NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS)and the GrayLit Network.

During the first six months of the NTRS service (June-Dec 1994),10,000 customers logged on and usage was steadily increased. Theaverage weekly accesses grew from 1,100 in July to over 2,300 inDecember (8).

The GrayLIT Network was launched as a response to recommendationsfrom a DOE (Department of Energy) workshop in May 2000 (9).Providing access to the grey literature of U.S. Federal Agencies,GrayLIT allows cross-searching of more than 100,000 full-texttechnical reports located at DOE, the DOD (Department of Defense),the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), and NASA (10).

Another notable online collection of reports is available from the RTO(Research and Technology Organization), which is the focus fordefence research and technology activities within NATO. The RTOweb site provides access to a collection of full text documents producedby the NATO Research and Technology Organization and itspredecessor, AGARD (Advisory Group for Aerospace Research &Development) (11). In fact, the RTO has stopped distributing hardcopyreports, so the only access to their material is through the Internet.

By providing Internet access to the full text of technical reports, theseinitiatives have made a huge step in raising the visibility of this type ofliterature, and have also made it relatively easy to obtain the reports

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when they have been identified, through the ability to downloaddocuments as PDF files.

THE SITUATION IN THE UKThere are cultural differences between the US and UK. The US candrive disclosure and dissemination through the federal agencies within apolitical culture of freedom of information. Within the UK the need topublish is not necessarily recognised by the agencies carrying out theresearch and there can be debate over who owns the intellectualproperty rights of the research. Even if the government has funded theresearch, the agency or company can be reluctant to divulgeinformation which they see as being their property and of commercialadvantage. Additionally, in contrast to the scientific community,engineering publication is not linked to a reward system, and so there isno personal professional gain in publishing results.

Little attention has been given to UK technical reports and comparedwith the big sisters of research publication such as journals andconferences, the report has played the role of Cinderella. Apart fromthe substantial holdings of BLDSC, major collections of technicalreports tend to be scattered across academia, government and industry.These resources are difficult to identify, locate and access, as there hasbeen little co-ordination across or within sectors and there is no nationaldatabase of holdings.

The work done by the British Library in maintaining the UK part ofSIGLE is the single act of making report literature visible andaccessible. Unfortunately SIGLE is not the most accessible or highprofile of databases. Even within the British Library the full extent ofthe reports collection is unknown. The holdings of US reports are notcatalogued at all, although they contain some 12,000 reports series,mainly of NTIS, NASA, AIAA, USDoE, ERIC and IMS items (12)which are much larger than their holdings of UK reports.

Over the past few years there has been a political drive to encouragecross-sectoral collaboration and access to information, in the drive for aknowledge economy and to increase the productivity of 'UK pic'.Alongside this political background, the explosion in the use of theInternet has created a common and accessible information andcommunication tool. In the context of grey literature, there are some


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important initiatives in the UK which promote collaboration andresource-sharing in the library, museum and archives sector, chiefly thevision of the DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource) andfunding bodies such as the RSLP and BLCCP.

JISC and the DNER

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) stimulates andenables the innovative application and cost-effective use of informationsystems and information technology in higher and further educationacross the UK (13). In November 1999, JISC launched a strategydocument for the DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource)(14). The DNER vision is to integrate access to all of the electronicservices, databases and datasets available to the UK higher and furthereducation community through cross-searching and value-added serviceslike document delivery (15).

RSLP (Research Support Libraries Programme)The RSLP was born in 1999, in the wake of the Follett Review (16) andthe associated Anderson Report (17), and has £30million funding to beawarded over three years (18). It encourages cross-sectoral andconsortial collaboration and sharing within the infrastructure forresearch proposed by Dearing (19). Its mission is to support research byenhancing access to library resources through collaborative collectionmanagement, and improved indexing, cataloguing and conservation(20,21).

The British LibraryThe British Library has a long tradition of library co-operation andcollaboration. The BLCCP is also involved in developing co-operationand partnership in the key areas of collection development, preservationand retention, access, bibliographic services and record creation (22).

MAGiC - MANAGED ACCESS TO GREY LITERATURECOLLECTIONSFunded by the RSLP and BLCCP, the MAGiC project is a first steptowards establishing a new collaborative system for the collection,storage and utilisation of engineering grey literature. Importantly, itseeks to ensure that access to technical reports becomes part of the


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continuing development of the DNER.

The project team comprises the following organisations:

• The British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC);

• Cranfield University (CU);

• The Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA);

• Loughborough University, Department of Information Science(LU);

• The Public Record Office (PRO);

• SIRSI Limited.

The involvement of the Public Record Office is timely in the light ofthe Government's archives policy statement, which amongst itsobjectives, seeks to ensure that,

'...close cross-sectoral links between the archival and education sectors are established, developedand used to national benefit.' (23)

The project aims to provide the UK engineering community with agreater awareness of, and access to, key collections of technical reports.This goal is being realised through the following objectives:

Collection development, management and retention

• map key holdings in the public domain, especially, the BritishLibrary Document Supply Centre (BLDSC), the Public RecordOffice (PRO) and the Universities, as well as limiteddistribution report collections, e.g. Defence Evaluation andResearch Agency/Defence Research Information Centre(DERA/DRIC)

• explore the potential for collection rationalisation between thePRO, the BLDSC and the Universities, in the context of thePRO's new draft disposition policy

• develop a methodology for identifying key reports or groupingsof reports, within a collection, to enable the prioritisation ofdecisions relating to digitisation

Enhancing the visibility of key collections

• lay the foundations for the development of a National ReportsCatalogue


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• provide an entry point to search and browse widely distributedresources

• explore the feasibility of incorporating controlled access tolimited distribution reports

Enhancing access via electronic storage and document supply

• develop a core electronic archive of engineering reportliterature based on reports from PRO, BLDSC, DERA, and theUniversities

• evaluate the feasibility of creating a commercial service basedon the supply of electronic documents from the archive, or on-demand digitisation, as well as the further development oflending services based around the national reports collection ofthe BLDSC (24).

ASSESSMENT OF THE USE AND VALUE OF ENGINEERINGGREY LITERATURE

The information seeking behaviour of engineers has been welldocumented, notably in the AIM-UK research (25), NASA/DODsponsored Knowledge Diffusion Research Project (26), and also theEURILIA (European Initiative in Libraries and Information inAerospace) project, funded by the EC Action Programme (27,28,29).From these studies it is known when information is needed in theresearch process and also the reasons why report information is used.What is unknown is how valuable technical reports are to engineerswhen compared with other sources of information. For this reasonMAGiC has chosen to examine this aspect rather than repeat a survey ofuse.

Value of information is a notoriously difficult entity to pin down. Whatmeasures of value can be used for technical literature? Can a monetaryvalue be attached to a report? Does a report's value decrease with itsage? Even if reports are valued highly as information sources for thereasons previously discussed, will that value translate into a willingnessto pay?

Reports are sometimes not commercially available, and are distributedthrough exchange programmes. For example, NASA has had bilateralagreements directly with organisations that produce reports. In this


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case there is no market price to index a commercial value of the report.Even if a market price can be established, there has been a precedent setby the US where reports are freely available through the Internet. Setagainst this 'free-of-charge' culture, is it plausible to challenge theexpectations of engineers that report information should be 'free'? Canthe cost of obtaining a report compare with the price of a BritishLibrary interlibrary loan, for example?

Considering the academic or research value of report literature is also achallenge. Examining the BLDSC supply figures for technical reports,the number of requests for reports is low compared with journals andconferences. Does this indicate that reports have a low value, or do theproblems of awareness and identification of appropriate reports retardrequest numbers? If engineers were aware of, and could easily locatereports of interest, would requests increase?

The project team recognises that not enough information is available onthe commercial viability or otherwise of grey-literature databases anddocument delivery services. A major component of the evaluation willbe to assess the economics of the service including the market andwillingness to pay.

Studies will be conducted at the beginning and towards the end of theproject in order to analyse what effect, if any, the project and the servicehas had on the perception, awareness and use of report literatureamongst the engineering community. The assessment process willinvolve a number of test sites across the sector, and will employ avariety of evaluation methods, including the collection of statistical data(e.g. interlibrary loan requests, usage statistics of both printed anddigitised reports, and questionnaire data), and qualitative data (e.g. in-depth interviews with research engineers, critical incident technique,analysis of bibliographies of published work). It is intended to carryout a trial of the demonstrator MAGiC service to obtain feedback onusability and content. The aim is to investigate the value to theengineer of having access to the digitised reports service and the impacton productivity.

COLLECTION ANALYSIS METHODOLOGYMAGiC is exploring a variety of approaches that will enable librariesand archives to identify the most important documents within a


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collection, in terms of use or potential use, in order to prioritise materialfor digitisation. Potential quantitative methods include measuringexisting use where available and citation analysis. Qualitative methodsinclude: content analysis of current literature to identify trends anddevelopments; the identification of, and interviews with, a group ofexperts in the field to establish a set of research priorities; liaison withthe engineering research community to test the set of priorities.

Initial attempts to gather usage statistics have proved disappointing. Sofar, for a variety of reasons including recent changes of library systemsand prevalent cataloguing practices, libraries have either been unable tosupply figures at all, or data supplied have been patchy or statisticallyinsignificant.

A preliminary investigation into citation analysis has shown it to belabour intensive, difficult and of limited statistical significance.References are cited inconsistently and self-citation can skew results.Although a small number of highly cited reports were identified, thisrepresented less than 0.5% of the total references checked. Whilecitation analysis is able to identify popular and therefore alreadyaccessible reports, it is unable to identify 'hidden literature' or reportsthat may be used if they were more visible. Overall, results suggest thatthe effort outweighs the potential benefits. It is doubtful whetherquantitative analysis can be included in a general collection analysismethodology.

Early investigations into qualitative methods of analysing collectionsare encouraging. Using test examples of current/emerging trendsidentified in consultation with engineers from ESDU, it was possible toidentify small numbers of reports for digitisation from the SIGLEdatabase and collections at Kings Norton Library, Cranfield and thePRO, with very little effort and time taken. Currently, MAGiC isexploring potential methods to reliably and easily identify trends on anongoing basis.

MAPPING COLLECTIONS

Initial investigations, based around case studies of ARC (AeronauticalResearch Council), RAE (Royal Aeronautical Establishment) and otherreports series, have shown that cataloguing of engineering technicalreports is of poor quality and is inconsistent, both within and between


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Metadata exchange between MAGiC and other organisations

Metadataproviders

ILL or documentsupply system

Authentication

Local metadata store:

•collection level descriptions

•item level descriptions

•locations of holdings, electronicor physical

•full text indexes

End user searches or browses technical reportsmetadata/full text indexes. A list of reports, physical orelectronic Is returned, along with their locations.Subject to authentication and/or payment, the user canreceive electronic reports at the desktop. Print reports canbe'ordered through ILL requests, for loan, photocopy,or email using digitisation on demand

FIG 1: MAGiC demonstrator service architecture

libraries. In general, libraries treat technical reports series asperiodicals and have only a single catalogue entry at series level(collection level description), with some indication of the ranges ofreport numbers held and those missing. Where there is item levelcataloguing, descriptions are "thin" or non-existent. Report numbersare entered inconsistently and few library catalogues appear to allowcollections to be searched by reports as a separate category.

The Public Records Office (PRO) is the one organisation investigated,so far, which provides entries for both series and individual reports, butcoverage is of relatively old reports. Descriptors are not available toidentify subject areas or document types and so the engineering reportscollections cannot be searched separately from the other holdings.

The SIGLE database, in effect, provides an index and catalogue recordsfor reports held at the British Library. Individual reports are cataloguedand assigned engineering descriptors as defined in the SIGLEclassification codes. In conjunction with BL's ARPI (Alpha-numericalReports Publications Index), the SIGLE database has been a useful toolfor identifying the producers of UK reports series and report numbers.


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MAGiC DEMONSTRATOR SERVICE

From the start, MAGiC has intended to complement and assist thedevelopment of a subject-based portal for engineering, as envisaged byJISC for the creation of the DNER. Therefore, it is very important toensure that the MAGiC demonstrator service adheres, as far as possible,to the new DNER standards and guidelines document (30).

Our investigations have shown that the role of library catalogues in theMAGiC service is limited by existing report cataloguing practices. Thishas significant implications for the shape and structure of the service. Iflibraries routinely catalogued individual reports and linked thosecatalogue records to a 'parent' record detailing the report series, it maybe possible to create a system to search different catalogues in adistributed environment. However, with the current lack of acataloguing resource base, this is not feasible.

Instead the current vision of the service has a "hybrid" architecturecomprising centralised metadata (catalogue records) stored in arelational database with distributed data (the reports themselves,whether physical or electronic). The database will hold collection leveldescriptions and report descriptions linked to the locations of holdings,as well as indexes harvested from electronic full text archives.Resources will be classified using the EEVL engineering classificationscheme, which is based on Engineering Index subject terms. Theservice will also integrate with authentication services, the BLDSCInterlibrary Loan service and other document supply services. (SeeFigure 1)

Using a standard web browser, the end-user will be able to search andbrowse resources. A list of reports matching the search criteria will bereturned, along with their locations. Subject to authentication andpayment, the user will be able to receive electronic reports directly tothe desktop. Hardcopy reports can be ordered through ILL requests, forloan, photocopy, fax or email using digitisation on demand.

Holding metadata centrally, in a relational database, has severaladvantages over metadata distributed across library catalogues. Usersbenefit from consistent resource descriptions, and faster searching andbrowsing. Administrators benefit by gaining control over the qualityand consistency of the metadata.


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A relational database can hold any metadata required, without theconstraints of MARC imposed by library catalogues, yet it will bepossible to map to MARC21, XML, DC or any other formats deemeddesirable. This allows for interoperability, via Z39.50 and otherprotocols, with the DNER, participants in the Open Archives Initiativeand a wide range of other organisations. MARC21 is preferred overUKMARC in light of the British Library's decision to adopt MARC21(31) and in order to conform to the Bath Profile implementation ofZ39.50 (32).

For demonstration purposes it will be possible to populate the databasewith 200,000+ records input from the MAGiC partners. In the longerterm, obtaining reports metadata remains a challenge, but lesschallenging than asking libraries across the UK to engage in an exerciseto catalogue their reports collections comprehensively! To participatein the service, all libraries would have to do is supply us with reportnumber ranges held in each series, the rest would be MAGiC.

The MAGiC database will expand as additional sources of metadata arediscovered. It is possible to envisage MAGiC as a "metadataexchange" service, harvesting records where they are available, holding"master datasets" and allowing libraries to harvest records to enhancetheir own local services.

DISSEMINATION AND DIALOGUEThe major dissemination tool of MAGiC is the website athttp://www.magic.ac.uk . Although this is a must for every projectundertaken, the MAGiC site is an integral part of the project's activity.As well as the necessary project outline, the site is continuously updatedand work in progress is posted for comment. The success or failure ofMAGiC will rest on the quantity and quality of input from engineersand others, like librarians, with a vested interest in widening access togrey literature. To this end, the web site is also being used as a channelof communication with the engineering community, by setting up adiscussion forum.

This paper has outlined the importance of technical report literature, itsunique strengths and the difficulties in identifying and locating reportsof interest. It has described the MAGiC project within the context ofnational initiatives and given an insight into the work in progress and


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some of the challenges to be met. If the project is to succeed, MAGiCneeds your help. If you have, or know of, a collection of engineeringreports, please inform the MAGiC team. We would also welcome anyviews or comments you may have on the project. Please email PaulNeedham at [email protected].

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2. BLAGDEN, J., HARRINGTON, J. and WOODFIELD, H. Eurilia (European Initiative inLibrary and Information in Aerospace): an audit of aerospace information needs in fiveEuropean countries. Cranfield University: COA report no. 9405, November 1994.

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4. PINELLI, T. E., BARCLAY, R. O. and KENNEDY, J. M. The technical communicationpractices of British Aerospace engineers and scientists: results of the Phase 4 RAeS MailSurvey. NASA/DoD aerospace knowledge diffusion research project report number 25.NASA TM 109098, May 1994.

5. http://www.bl.uk/services/bsds/dsc/greylit.html

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8. NELSON, M. L., GOTTLICH, G. L., BIANCO, D. J., BINKLEY, R. L., KELLOGG, Y. D.,PAULSON, S. S., BEAUMONT, C. J., SCHMUNK, R. B., KURTZ, M. J. andACCOMAZZI, A. The widest practicable dissemination: the NASA technical report server.Computers in Aerospace 10, San Antonio TX, AIAA-95-0964, March 28-30, 1995, 91-103

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Lightening grey literature: Making the invisible visible