Grey Literature 

Grey literature is defined as "information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing" ie. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body." — ICGL Luxembourg definition, 1997. Expanded in New York, 2004

Types of Grey Literature

• Government Information
• Dissertations and Theses
• Conference Proceedings (select Conference Proceedings Citation Index)
• Newspapers and Magazines
• Think Tanks

Finding grey literature

• Think Tank Search (Harvard University) – think tanks can give an appreciation of government action or inaction in an area
• Hillwatch listing of Canadian and international think tanks
• Economics Search Engine (American Economic Association)
• Theses Databases:
• Dissertations and Theses Global - Discover dissertations and theses published by educational institutions from around the world, from 1743 to the present (some full text available from 1997 - present)
• Foreign Doctoral Dissertations - 700,000 doctoral dissertations from outside the U.S. and Canada
• Thesis Canada

Resources

• Alternative Press Index - Indexes over 300 periodicals, newspapers and magazines which report and analyze the practices and theories of cultural, economic, political, and social change.  90% of the publications indexed in API are unique.
• Canadian Research Index (Provides detailed citations to monographs and serial publications in the Microlog microfiche collection located in MADGIC)
• Canadian Public Policy Collection  Collection of publications from Canadian public policy institutes, government agencies, advocacy groups, think-tanks, university research centres and other public interest groups.  
• Canadian Health Research Collection 
• Conference Board of Canada e-Library
• Social Research and Demonstraton Corporation A non-profit research organization, created specifically to develop, field test, and rigorously evaluate new programs.
• NBER (National Bureau of Economics Research) Working Papers
• PolicyFile (U.S. Policy)  Provides access to U.S. foreign and domestic policy papers and gray literature.
• Asia-Studies Full-Text Online

How-to Guide

• Finding the Hard to Finds: Searching for Grey Literature - University of British Columbia