GreyNet International

Beginning the Winter of 2009,

* In January, GreyNet was once again asked by the University of New Orleans to provide a distance education course on grey literature for 3 hours credit. Twenty-three senior undergraduate students enrolled - ten more than the first semester in which the course was offered;

* After a year of negotiations, GreyNet reached an agreement with Emerald to license the rights, whereby the full-text papers from the first four conferences in the International Conference Series on Grey Literature

(1993-1999) would become accessible in the OpenSIGLE Repository. This agreement guarantees that research results from the international GreyNet Community would be both comprehensive and available on an open access platform;

* An agreement was signed with Elsevier in which articles from The Grey Journal, an International Journal on Grey Literature would be abstracted and indexed in Scopus. TGJ entered its first lustrum (2005-2009);

* The GL10 Conference Proceedings were published and the GL11 Conference Announcement and Call-for-Papers distributed.

In the Spring of 2009,

* A Letter of Understanding was signed with the National Technical Library in Prague. NTK agreed to host the Twelfth International Conference on Grey Literature on December 6-7, 2010;

* A publishing agreement was signed with K.G. Saur Verlag in Munich for the publication of a monograph on grey literature. This agreement guarantees that the rights of the 20 contributing authors will remain with their own work. This monograph will be targeted to students and faculty at colleges and schools of library and information science as well as information professionals worldwide;

* Spring also witnessed the GL11 Program Committee Meeting chaired by FLICC/FEDLINK as well as a U.S. Workshop on Grey Literature in the Library of Congress in which 30 participants from various national libraries and federal agencies attended;

* The first retrospective metadata records and corresponding full-text papers were added to the OpenSIGLE Repository. These retro-records originated in the Fourth International Conference on Grey Literature held in Washington D.C. in 1999;

* The first 'guest edited' issue of The Grey Journal by Deni Seymour on Archaeology and Grey Literature reemphasized the thematic approach to the International Journal on Grey Literature and a subject-related approach to this field of information studies.

In the Summer of 2009,

* GreyWorks, a workshop on grey literature focusing on the supply and demand sides of grey literature was held in Amsterdam;

* Wiki's on the Grey Literature Network Service and other grey literature initiatives were launched under the guidance of Dr. Joachim Schopfel from the University of Lille, France.

In the Autumn of 2009,

* A site visit was paid to the newly constructed National Technical Library in Prague, where NTK will host GL12. This was preceded by a National Seminar on Grey Literature in Brno, Czech Republic;

* When autumn turned to fall, a newly established OpenSIGLE Consortium submitted an FP7 Proposal to the European Commission with the goal of creating a pan-European e-infrastructure that would better serve the OpenSIGLE Repository and further the advancement of open access to digital grey literature collections and resources;

* GreyNet signed a Partnership Agreement with ICSTI, International Council for Scientific and Technical Information. This newly established partnership lends to GreyNet a multilateral base, elevating it from a bilateral one that it already shares with a number of ICSTI Members. GreyNet seeks to provide ICSTI with an opportunity to further broaden its information activities to the social sciences and humanities;

* Grey Literature became a published chapter in ELIS, the prestigious Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences;

* The GreyNet Award 2009 for outstanding achievement in the field of grey literature was awarded to Dr. Debbie Rabina from Pratt Institute's School of Information and Library Science. The area of her research dealt with "Copyright licenses and legal deposit practices of grey multimedia materials";

* The relaunch of a U.S. Working Group on Grey Literature represented by the sectors of government, academics, business and industry;

* And, the commencement of the Eleventh International Conference on Grey Literature hosted by FLICC/FEDLINK in the Library of Congress on 14-15 December in which 70 organizations from some 12 countries worldwide participated.

Yes, 2009 was a leap-year for the grey literature community as well as for the international Grey Literature Network Service. GreyNet extends to the numerous and varied stakeholders on the information landscape a Happy and Prosperous 2010.