International identification and 'white and grey literature': Identities, retrieval, reuse and the certainty of knowledge while sharing and connecting information

During the 20th century the development of identifier codes - in most cases internationally spread under ISO auspices - encouraged the idea that few things were yet "unidentifiable" and "uncontrollable" in document field. Then, the expansion of new technologies for information retrieval on the Net, made thinkable the advent of a sort of social control for documents, data and metadata identifiers: this seemed to be in conflict with the concept of a unique identification coming from an authoritative origin. In fact, we've seen more recently a new increase of bibliographic identifiers, mainly concerning digital environment documents, and especially, some publishing sectors not directly interested to the topic of identification have been involved in. Finally, also responsibility entities (individuals, groups, corporate bodies...) have been included under identifying activity. The identification of publishing or documentary products/actors seems to be now consolidated. So, it becomes urgent to establish common guidelines - description, metadata, cross-identification - widely shared and implemented by agencies or any other component of the information chain. The inclusion of grey literature in meta-analysis is fundamental. We consider the usefulness of a dynamic model for cross-sharing and cross-use of data, metadata and identifiers, that allow international agencies to pool or exchange their information collections, avoiding duplications when same data match in more than one archive. Moreover, this model could be easily supported by current techniques for information retrieval via linked data. Obviously the aim would not to create the nth super archive, but to encourage the disseminated allocation of multiple information, that could be found or summarized just when searched by users. Necessary condition is the cooperation among the agencies. The goal of this study is showing which consequence could represent a general improvement of the public information quality level, thanks to the exponential circulation of authoritative data: "low-cost" for agencies, publicly available for everybody, and easy update according to rigorous certified criteria.