Milestones of grey literature in the Czech Republic

Abstract

This poster aims to take you through the all-important milestones and moments of Czech grey literature history. The history is still brief, but not poor at all. Until 2005, the National Library of Technology in Prague (NTK) was in charge of distributing grey literature data from the Czech Republic into the System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe (SIGLE). That year, SIGLE was discontinued, and that led to a project at NTK to build the Czech National Repository of Grey Literature (NUŠL) in order not to lose valuable documents created outside the main publishing stream. The preparatory phase took about two years, and in 2008, the project began led by NTK with financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. This was one of the biggest milestones for Czech grey literature, with NTK’s role shifting from contributor to central collector and leader of this topic in the Czech Republic. This year is the tenth anniversary since the kick off day of the project, and many things have changed since then, including software, features, design, people, and much more. The Seminar on Providing Access to Grey Literature that has been linked to the project from beginning has evolved as well. In 2014, it was transformed into an international Conference on Grey Literature and Repositories. This poster evaluates the progress of this repository and its efforts in collecting, preserving, sharing, providing accessibility to, and promoting grey literature in the Czech Republic. Past experiences lead us to consider the future of grey literature as in general as in case of NUŠL and maybe also its reassessment.