Electronic women's grey literature in academic libraries

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand how electronic grey literature is being incorporated into Women's Studies collections at academic libraries.Design/methodology/approachThe electronic grey literature holdings of four American academic libraries at universities with graduate Women's Studies programs were collected and analyzed. This included: databases; digital special collections; web sites; and online course guides that the library had created for Women's Studies courses.FindingsWomen's Studies International and GenderWatch were the two most popular databases, being available at three of the four libraries studied. The most popular web sites were University of Wisconsin – Women's Studies Librarian (www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/) and WSSLinks: Women and Gender Studies web sites (http://libr.org/wss/wsslinks/index.html). Recommended web sites were overwhelmingly multidisciplinary in nature and covered a variety of topics related to Women's Studies such as business, art, health, music, and philosophy. The digital collections with women's grey literature all dealt with historical topics and were either about a specific group of people or a specific person or place that had a tie to the university where it was housed.Originality/valueGrey literature is becoming an increasing popular topic in collection development and document preservation. However, there is little research on grey literature created by women. Specific databases and web sites that were found in the collections studied are mentioned so that other libraries may use the information to enhance their own collections.