Web links to sources of Social Science Information

3. Finding "grey" literature

Selected sources of grey literature, including conference proceedings, dissertations and theses

COPAC: provides free access to the merged online catalogues of 24 major university research libraries in the UK and Ireland, plus the British Library and the National Library of Scotland (http://www.copac.ac.uk/copac/)

Dissertation Abstracts: This contains details of dissertations from the UK (1988-present) and US (1861-present) along with selected M.Sc. dissertations.

Index of conference proceedings: The British Library (BL) receives all published conference proceedings; these are listed in the Index, now compiled annually. It can be searched freely through the BL Public Catalogue (BLPC) by selecting the "Advanced search" option, then "Select Individual Catalogues". See: http://blpc.bl.uk/

The Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings (http://www.isinet.com/products/litres/istp/) is available through Web of Knowledge, and includes proceedings from many health-related conferences

Index to Social Sciences and Humanities Proceedings: Includes multidisciplinary coverage of conference proceedings, as well as reports, preprints and monographs (http://www.isinet.com/products/litres/isshp/)

Ovid HealthSTAR Database comprises literature from MEDLINE, from the Hospital Literature Index, from selected journals, and from the National Library of Medicine's now-defunct HealthSTAR database. (http://www.ovid.com/site/products/ovidguide/hstrdb.htm)

Planex: The Planning Exchange database covers regeneration and development, including community, economic, environmental, and physical impacts. It is Now part of the IDOX information service. See: http://www.i-documentsystems.com/iii/infoservices/index.htm

PolicyFile: Indexes mainly US public policy research and practice reports. See: www.policyfile.com

SIGLE: SIGLE (System for Information on Grey Literature) is a bibliographic database covering European non-conventional literature in the fields of pure and applied natural sciences and technology, economics, social sciences and humanities. (1974-present). Produced by EAGLE (European Association for Grey Literature In Europe) (See: http://www.kb.nl/infolev/eagle/frames.htm)

TRANSPORT, TRIS, ITRD, Transdoc: The TRIS Database contains almost half a million records relating to books, technical reports, conference proceedings, journal articles and on-going transport research, and is produced by the US Department of Transportation (http://trisonline.bts.gov/sundev/search.cfm/). ITRD (International Transport Research Documentation) includes international transport literature provided by research organisations from 23 countries (http://www.itrd.org/)

Both are available on the Transport database, along with the ECMT TRANSDOC database, which includes literature on transport economics, making TRANSPORT the most comprehensive source of transportation literature. Available from various database providers including Ovid and SilverPlatter.

Urbadisc: Compilation of databases from British, French, Italian, and Spanish sources focusing on urban and regional planning and policy issues with citations from journals, books, government documents and other sources. Includes the databases Acompline and Urbaline from the UK. (http://www.urbandata.org/en/urbadisc/).

Urban Studies Abstracts (published by Sage) may also be of interest to those reviewing urban literature, as will Housing Information Digest, Housing Abstracts (HABS), and the New Towns Record (from Planex), which is a CD-ROM containing literature relating to the experiences of Britain’s New towns (1946-1996) See: http://www.planex.co.uk/ntr/.