The proliferation of grey literature in all subject areas poses great
challenges, concerns and responsibilities for libraries. This article
examines the major issues most germane to the acquisition and collecti
on development aspects of grey literature and providing access to it i
n library collections. With increasing academic and scholarly value pl
aced in the grey literature as an original and primary source for info
rmation, many collection development policies are beginning to include
grey literature as a body of information equally as important as mono
graphs, serials, data files, special collections, manuscripts, maps an
d other resources in research collections. In the three years since th
is article was composed and delivered, there were several major develo
pments in scholarly communication and publishing, each benefiting grey
Literature greatly. The most paramount was the increase in self-publi
shing via the World Wide Web (WWW), which scholarly, professional, and
commercial publishing venues adopted as their platform of choice. For
grey literature, this has been a most exciting migration, with the mo
st enhanced searching capabilities currently available for grey litera
ture, plus the ability to integrate formats and various datasets.