Grey literature: format agnostic yet gaining recognition in library collections

Purpose ‐ Grey literature, difficult to define, acquire and process, has recently entered into an age of enlightenment due to increasing electronic publishing opportunities and digitization efforts. Emerging technologies, including social media, that can be integrated with sound, film and collection practices in many kinds of special, academic, government, public and research libraries can point to new examples of grey literature that show great demand for its utility and thus importance placed by growing user communities. This paper seeks to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach ‐ Research was reviewed using examples from the social and applied sciences literature emphasizing management constructs to demonstrate directions that grey literature had assumed in generating new forms of information. Findings ‐ As libraries examine the merits of grey literature, they are attempting to be hybrid centers of print and digital content to handle data, visual resources, imagery, and all forms of media. Every source can be considered a potential reference tool, access barriers to materials are lowered, and items circulate more and are requested through electronic and mobile access. This revised lifecycle of information forces libraries to rethink the scope and value of collections. Practical implications ‐ The challenges facing libraries that want to bridge formats and truly embrace new technologies are complex, potentially expensive and difficult to navigate and administer. However, the experiences of those that have welcomed grey literature can demonstrate the great potential of making less used documents more visible through emerging technologies. Originality/value ‐ Examples of scientific, business/census data, news/media coverage, genealogical information and public/consumer health content, each of which has seen large increases in demand and debuted new information products, often as open source, suggest that libraries can respond to these challenges by creating hospitable access in innovative ways by acknowledging that the lessons learned through the last few decades with new forms of grey literature can be useful in the context of library planning. The authors demonstrate how these examples now form a central core of what once was grey literature and are transitioning from low use to greater value by user communities.