Survey of Grey Literature of National Library and Archives of Iran

The further rise of electronic publishing has come to change the scale and diversity of grey literature facing librarians and other information practitioners. Grey literature is an important source of information due to the uniqueness of the content that gets published. Grey literature may thusly reduce publication bias, increase reviews' comprehensiveness and timeliness and foster a balanced picture of available evidence. National Library and Archives of Iran as National Heritage Guardians are tasked with collecting and organizing grey literature that are not publicly available because of their nature. A variety of grey literature in this review included (dissertation, Announcement, Brochure, standard, Pamphlet, Newsletter, Project, Guidebook, Report, Poster, Government document, Curriculum Vitae and Bulletin). The results of this research show that: more than a quarter of the resources of the National Library and Archives of Iran are grey literature. A third of the grey resources were uploaded to the Digital Library of the National Library and Archives of Iran. Because the users of theses and dissertations are more than a variety of grey literature, therefore two thirds of the resources in the digital library are theses and dissertations. Guide books, newsletters, bulletins, and Curriculum Vitae are the sources that do not have a major contribution to the grey literature of the National Library. A review of date of publication of grey resources revealed that government documents are the oldest resource in this series.