GreyGuide - Guide to Good Practice in Grey Literature: A Community Driven Open Resource Project

The goal of this project is to develop an open source database of good practices in the field of grey literature. These would range from the production and processing of grey literature through to its distribution, uses, and preservation. The purpose of an online database of good practice in grey literature would provide the many stakeholders in government, academics, business and industry with the benefits of experience, sustained management, and proven results. The procedure initially applied in this project deals with the design and development of a template that would capture data and information about published or proposed good practices in a standardized format. The template likewise seeks to identify intended users of a good practice, as well as metadata that facilitates the search and retrieval of records in the database. Technical developments related to the design and construction of the database, its eventual platform as well as its maintenance are other related issues addressed in the project. While there are no direct costs associated with the project, each partner is committed to allocate human and material resources needed to carry out their related tasks. It is expected that the initial phase in acquiring records for the database will rely on channels available via the Grey Literature Network Service. Populating the database will be somewhat time-consuming and the first harvest will not produce an abundance of records. The project is long term; however it is all the more worthwhile. The GreyGuide will provide a unique resource in the field of grey literature that is long awaited and which responds to the information needs of a diverse international grey literature community.