Abstract:
Digital grey literature is an important output that deserves management by libraries. The
tools for achieving this frequently relinquish this task to the creators of the works with
general poor results. The aim of this study was to examine organization and
dissemination practices accorded to digital grey literature by faculty, and their underlying
motivations with a view of providing a framework for improving its management by the
library. The objectives of the study were to identify digital grey literature produced,
assess the organization and dissemination practices accorded to it, understand
motivations of the choice of these practices and therefore suggest a framework for
improving grey literature management for the library. The study adopted Actor Network
Theory (ANT), Social Network Theory (SET) and Social Capital (SC) as viewing lens.
The study employs an interpretive case, with Strathmore University as the unit of study.
Stratified followed by purposive sampling was conducted for the full time faculty spread
across four disciplinary areas. Data was collected using in-depth semi-structured
interviews. A total of 21faculty were interviewed. Recorded interviews were transcribed,
coded and analyzed thematically based on factors derived from the theories used. The
results indicate that faculty produce and share a variety of digital grey literature outputs,
which are elusive to define, even to themselves. They use existing technology such as e-
mail, e-learning and online cloud storage services to organize their works for future
retrieval. Faculty share the digital grey literature they produce with the official
disseminating agencies of the works based on mandates and expectations, with colleagues
based on trust relations and need and with students for teaching functions. Faculty are not
aware of subject repositories in their disciplines, though they have used them online to
retrieve works. Faculty interviewed had only done mediated deposits to the institutional
repository. They perceive additional time and effort, skills, copyright concerns and
quality concerns to be key deterrents to sharing their works online. They envisage
professional recognition, publicity and citations as a benefit of sharing their digital grey
literature, but acknowledge that this can only be derived from subject repositories and not
institutional repositories. Predatory publishers are identified as an emerging cost in digital
grey literature sharing in institutional repositories. An atmosphere of trust and open
communication channels is perceived to positively influence a sharing culture. Faculty
perceive the librarians as competent and can be entrusted with their digital grey literature
works. The study concludes that for proper digital grey literature management to be
achieved, librarians must be ready to mitigate the costs and offer the benefits envisaged
by faculty: professional recognition, publicity and citations. The study recommends that
librarians adopt a holistic approach to grey literature management and not limit
themselves to institutional repositories. They will need to extend the mediated deposits to
subject repositories and metric based systems such as Google Scholar so as to give
faculty the benefits they desire from sharing digital grey literature to a global audience,
and minimize identified and emerging costs.