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Regarding Grey Literature, we allude to the present as a time of enlightenment when newness is being rewarded and Grey Literature has a wider dispersion of hues. Enlightenment suggests a sense of illumination, instruction, insight and the historical period from the eighteenth century that fostered a philosophical and cultural movement that stressed human reasoning over blind faith and was in contrast to the religious and political temperament of the times while promoting scientific thinking cushioned the variations around the world and encouraged the promotion of new ideas with new methods of dissemination and products. The period became known as the Age of Reason that reformed society and advanced knowledge. Today's contemporary context has more breadth and depth, and eclipses a wider range of contributions due to diversity, assimilation, mobility, aggregation, and envisioning information in multiple strata.
Greyness when applied to information description, finding, acquiring and processing on the scale of 1-10 takes a "hardiness" test of being "more"grey and more traditional edging the colors to darker hues. Hardiness is analogized as being similar to many personality variables in the field of psychology, considered to measure a continuous dimension and show likenesses to personality constructs such as locus of control, sense of coherence, self-efficacy, or dispositional optimism ([1] Maddi, 1997).
In an increasingly digital environment, one may conclude the opposite, because of the information's ability to be crawled, mitigated, resourced, outsourced, distributed and integrated in its many mediums and formats. The range of new content, suggests creativity and innovation in all products which are the centerpiece of the academic experience and are reflected in both camps of scholarship and research, teaching and learning.
With an emphasis on new knowledge generation, the research focus can direct scholars, scientists and researchers to increasingly become more concerned and aware about intellectual property and protecting one's work and wares, to develop products that have commercial vitality and force the issue of technology transfer that benefit an employer, institutional affiliation and reinforce authorship. Enlightenment can brighten the surface and discussion of these new arenas and introduce them to wider audiences.
Our thinking about the issues we raise has been influenced by our own professional experiences in academic libraries and observing the changes that are readily taking place. Living with ambiguity...