In Ohio, the "grey literature" for the most part is not regarded as public documents.  A SHPO employee has written "... these technical reports are not available to the general public... these reports are not meant or written for the general public.  They are technical reports written and largely paid for by private industry, and reviewed by government agencies with jurisdiction over a project."  The reports "are available to those who have a legitimate need for the information they contain."  

While I do not know of anyone who has been refused access to a report, this "need-to-know" criterion has created considerable antagonism among the non-professional archaeological community.

In 1985 I compiled a bibliography of Ohio contract archaeology for the Ohio SHPO but that is no longer available and has never been updated.  Instead, there has been development of a very useful on-line site database, but it is subscription-only and at this point is limited to academics and CRM workers.  There is much talk about "public outreach" but for the general public this has largely been limited to non-professionals providing volunteer labor and site information.  Except for a few stray reports that have found their way into public libraries, I do not know of any public bibliographic access(other than the NADB database, which is not current and is not familiar to the general public).

Jim Murphy

----- Original Message -----
From: Smoke <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, March 26, 2007 2:52 pm
Subject: Re: Creating Access and Syntheses

> Anita: The USDA Forest Service Heritage data for sites and surveys is
> being put into a web-based system called INFRA.  Lots of security
> levels and we can only see the stuff from our own Forest and can not
> even see the stuff from another Forest in the same state. As far 
> as I
> can tell so far, its only real use is that it was developed for number
> crunching for upward reporting.  Has not helped us on-the-ground
> worker-ants even a little bit.
> 
> :-(
> 
> Smoke
> 
> 
> On 3/26/07, Anita Cohen-Williams <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > I have often batted the idea around about doing an archaeological
> > clearinghouse for gray literature, based on the model of ERIC
> > (Educational Resources Information Clearinghouse).
> >
> > Unfortunately, ERIC (which stored information at specific
> > institutions), collapsed as soon as government funding ran out.
> >
> > However, with the advent of CD-ROMs, and new ways of storing 
> data, it
> > may be possible to revisit the idea.
> >
> > What if every CRM agency sent a copy of their reports to one central
> > location, with the purpose of that information being scanned and
> > placed on CDs (or DVDs) for further storage? The data could be 
> kept in
> > categories for easy retrieval.
> >
> > At least we could keep up with the current information, and try 
> to go
> > back and retrieve older information.
> >
> > Unfortunately, I have found that older reports often disappear from
> > state repositories and archaeological facilities.
> >
> > --
> > Anita Cohen-Williams
> > ArchaeoSeek
> > http://archaeoseek.ning.com
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> Smoke Pfeiffer
> 
> Absence of Evidence is NOT Evidence of Absence
>