Forty Years, Two Name Changes, One Goal to Promote Grey Literature 1980-2020
System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe, SIGLE – OpenSIGLE – OpenGrey
The “System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe” (SIGLE) was established in 1980, two years after a seminar on grey literature was organised by the European Commission. SIGLE was operated by a network of national information or document supply centres active in collecting and promoting grey literature. It was a pan-European electronic bibliographic database and document delivery system.
In 2006, the SIGLE database migrated to OpenSIGLE – an online open access bibliographic database with Inist-CNRS as its Service Provider. The year following, GreyNet International became a Content Provider of its conference abstracts, preprints, slides, and author biographical notes. In so doing, OpenSIGLE became registered as a repository in OpenDOAR.
In 2010, the name OpenSIGLE was changed to OpenGrey, which provided improved research facilities and the export of records. Notification has been given that as of December 1, 2020 the OpenGrey Repository will be discontinued and preserved as a closed archive in the DANS EASY data archive.
In advance of the closure, all of GreyNet’s content in OpenGrey has been transferred to the GreyGuide Portal and Repository with ISTI-CNR as its System Provider. In order to facilitate new content from other providers, a multidisciplinary, multiple document type collection has been added to the GreyGuide Repository, which is likewise registered in OpenDOAR. RGL (Resources in Grey Literature) Collection welcomes acquisitions from communities of practice worldwide, http://greyguiderep.isti.cnr.it/userarea.php?langver=en.
