Library Guides
Do you have any feedback on this guide? We welcome all feedback.
Grey literature is literature that is not formally or commercially published. Things such as reports, conference proceedings, working papers, theses or dissertations etc are grey literature. It is called grey (or gray) to contrast with white or conventional published literature.
Your study and the assignments you do here will often require you to locate grey literature and finding grey literature is different from finding your usual academic literature such as journal articles. Some academic databases allow you to search for it but most don't. And most don't even index it.
Therefore you need to learn different ways to find this stuff.
An example of a government report is: Perry, Bryan. (2022). Child poverty in New Zealand. Ministry of Social Development. https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/child-poverty-in-nz/index.html
These three sources are good for finding grey literature for Business and Government subjects:
Read how to search these below.
It is not well known but Google has an Advanced Search option. This lets you limit your search to specific website domains, such as all government websites in Aotearoa New Zealand say or all Not for profit websites in the United Kingdom. This can be a very powerful and effective search when combined with the keywords on your topic. Using Google Advanced Search will very often be better at finding documents on a particular organisation's website than the site's search engine.
Access Google Advanced Search by googling "Google Advanced Search" or find it in the Google Search Settings menu at the bottom left:
Search New Zealand government websites for reports on child poverty
Overton is the world's largest database of policy documents and an excellent source of grey literature in all subject areas.
Use this link to access Overton, and register with your email address.
As Overton only contains grey literature you can search it as you would any other database.
Enter the keywords for your topic in the Search Policy Documents tab.
Overton comes back with 1106 documents. The first two are reports on tobacco packaging
ABI/INFORM Collection is a comprehensive business database that allows you to filter your search to specific types of grey literature, such as reports or market research.
Enter the keywords for your topic in Basic Search
On the results page click More under Source Type
Tick Reports in the Source type box, then click Apply
Your search now displays all the reports relating to tobacco
