Since its inception, this blog has served as a vehicle for sharing information and analysis on forced migration issues. Much of what I have highlighted is what we generally think of as "grey literature," i.e., unpublished or informally published materials that fall outside the mainstream distribution channels that exist for commercially published items like books and scholarly journal articles. For this reason, grey literature used to be quite hard to discover or to track down.
But over the years, organizations turned to the web to disseminate their publications (usually on a cost-free basis), thereby greatly facilitating access to grey literature - and enabling me to more easily reference research reports, working papers, project documents, official publications, training materials, conference presentations, newsletters, operational guidelines, etc.
That said, just because something is somewhere on the web doesn't necessarily guarantee straightforward access - for example, some items may not be indexed by search engines, some may once have been online but subsequently removed, some may have been mis-referenced because their title changed or they lack a publication date, etc. When publications are systematically collected and described from a central point, they are much easier to retrieve. This is equally true in digital and print environments.
Which brings me to the point of this introduction: This week, I plan on sharing tips on resources I have used to identify grey literature and which you may find useful too!
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