Grey literature – grey sources? Nuancing the view on professional documentation

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to nuance the perception about professional documentation (a.k.a. "grey literature"), assuming perception of documentation being a cultural aspect of accessibility. Design/methodology/approach -The study explores variations within the archaeological report genre through a bibliometric analysis of source use. Source characteristics are explored as well as correlations between report authors and source originators. Statistical frequency distribution is complemented by a correspondence analysis and a k-means cluster analysis to explore patterns. The patterns are interpreted as "frames of references" and related to circumstances for archaeological work. The study also discusses source representations. Findings -The source use patterns reveal a latent variation, not visible in the general analysis: a professional/academic frame of reference (mainly among authors affiliated with incorporated businesses and sole proprietorships) and an administrative frame of reference (mainly among authors affiliated with government agencies, foundations, and member associations) emerge. Research limitations/implications -The study focuses on Swedish field evaluation reports. Future research could test the results in relation to other types of reports and go beyond the document perspective to explore source use in documentation practices. Social implications -The results on variations in frames of references among report writers have implication for report readers and user. The results should also be considered in archaeology management and policy-making. On the level of source representation the results call for clarifications of vague representations and possibly omitted sources. Originality/value -This study contextualizes archaeological information use and focuses on variations in professional archaeology which has received little previous research attention. The bibliometric approach complements previous qualitative studies of archaeological information.

Land Developers and Archaeological Information

“…At the same time, the analysis indicated that the respondents tended to focus on their customary information sources and act within their habitual small information worlds (Burnett & Jaeger, 2008) or bounded "boxes" (Huvila, 2012). Even if the scopes of interest are not comparable, the two perspectives are reminiscent of the earlier highlighted fault lines in archaeological information production and use (including Börjesson's academic and administrative frames of references, Börjesson, 2015, andcolleagues, 2016, distinction of spatial, administrative and scientific information). In spite of the somewhat diverging interests in different types of information and some respondents' complaints of an information overflow, the respondents were rather unanimous in their interest in an early access to comprehensive and precise information about known archaeological sites and need to conduct further investigations.…”

“…They identified three distinct types of information in the process: administrative, spatial, and scientific, noting there is a lot of overlap between these categories. Börjesson (2015) has studied literature use in Swedish field reports from development-led archaeology projects. She concludes that there is latent variation between academically and administrative oriented frames of reference in the information use of report writers.…”

Beyond information policy

“…Despite the rich research on archaeological documentation only few studies focus specifically on the most common form of publication in archaeology: the DL archaeology report (Berggren and Burström, 2002;Börjesson, 2015;Seymour, 2009Seymour, , 2010a[1]. This study takes on DL archaeology as a case in an effort to add insight about this less studied form of archaeological documentation.…”

“…Magnusson Staaf and Gustafsson, 2002;Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2012a). A less developed line of research concerns how archaeological documentation is regulated by legislations, regulations and praxis explicated in handbooks (Börjesson, 2015;Carver, 2009;cf. Lindh, 2015).…”

“…Additionally information scientists direct attention to archaeological documentation (e.g. Börjesson, 2015;Huvila, 2006;Olsson, 2015). Research on archaeological documentation covers textual, visual and physical representations of archaeology (Gardin, 1980;Hodder, 1989;Lucas, 2012;Moser, 2012;Nordbladh, 2012;Pavel, 2010).…”