Welcome. I would like to present some of the results from two of the questions in the survey that was sent out relating to the legal and policy issues and then share a couple of reflections about those results and possible strategies for moving forward.

So the first question asked whether the legal and policy infrastructure was adequate in terms of funding, legal understandings, and policy protocols. So in other words, are the laws that are in place or the policies of

various agencies or organizations, are they adequate in supplying funding for grey literature, its creation, dissemination, archiving, retrieval, are the legal understandings of the uses of grey literature adequate and are the policies

that various entities involving grey literature, producing it, generating it, collecting it, making it available, are those adequate? And so a small percentage, about 15%, thought it was adequate. About a third

didn't disagree or agree, but close to half, 43%, disagreed that it wasn't inadequate. Some of the comments seem to be specific to particular national entities.

So one respondent commented that efforts in the United Kingdom were piecemeal. Another responded across several different national states, including Australia and the United States, seeming to respond more to government-generated data, talking about a portal that existed in

Canada, but in the United States and Australia, much of the literature is agency dependent. And so there is not a unified policy in place. So with these results, I think we can

conclude that there definitely is room for improving the legal and policy infrastructure that impacts the generation, dissemination, preservation of grey literature at really all levels, local, state or provincial, the regional, the national and certainly international levels.

Comments suggest not only those that I mentioned, but several others, that the centralization of access, especially regarding government grey literature, is key and needed. Increased funding to support the generation and dissemination and preservation of grey literature is also needed.

And policy mandates to centralize the access would increase the availability and the consistency, I think, of grey literature generation, dissemination, organization and retrieval.

The second question sort of followed up on that first question and asked whether the grey literature community should organize, should we do something, develop an advocacy group that would actively promote its concerns to policy and decision makers. Almost half of the respondents strongly agreed. 37% agreed and only 2.5% agreed, while a very small amount, 12%, neither agreed or disagreed.

So in total, 85% of the respondents believed that some action should be taken, whether it should be taken, whether it strongly should be taken.

And several of the comments focused on promoting the value of grey literature to librarians, not necessarily to the external community, not that that should be ignored, but that the promotion of grey literature within our own community is needed as

well, so that we don't have these discrepancies or prejudices against grey versus white literature. And one comment I thought was very interesting in that is that we should find a new term for what we call our literature. And the term itself, and we know labels within the LIS profession, can be very exclusionary.

And I think this is possibly an example of that, where the use of the term grey in and of itself is somewhat marginalizing and exclusionary. We might give some thought to that as time goes forward.

And what prompted my generation of a question like this is the grey literature community, at least those of us that have been coming regularly or somewhat regularly to the GL conferences, has been established, and I think it's up and running, it's not going to go away.

And I think the time might be ripe now to think about what should be our next steps. We're organized ourselves as a somewhat insular community, but what else should we be doing in terms of reaching out?

And what also prompted this is some of the work that I do for IFLA and ALA at the national and international levels in terms of advocacy and to policymakers. So some possibilities, I think that this type of advocacy or being a little more aggressive would be a natural

extension of the 2014 Pizza Declaration of Policy Development for Grey Literature, which has several provisions addressing the law and policy. Current committees within the grey community could possibly do this work, but it might be a new focus and a shift

of a focus, and maybe it does need a new committee, or maybe it just needs some coordination among the existing committees. There still seems to be a lack of understanding of what grey literature is, and one respondent believed that this lack of understanding is really part of the community now.

So one strategy would be to partner with a recognized international organization to see where we can align some of our interests. I think what's needed is to strategize and perform this advocacy in a deliberate manner.

In other words, where are the avenues? Obviously, there's a world of avenues available, but where would we be most effective? Where would we be most needed? At the national level, certainly from LIS advocacy here in the United States, there's

always a national legislative day where groups do go to the policymakers in Washington DC. At the international level, there are various UN agencies that might be appropriate for our literature. I think what we would need to do would be to prioritize and list those policy and legal issues that are most important to grey literature.

Is it the legal? Is it more the archiving and preservation? Is it more the funding? What are those issues? And prioritize them, and then figure out where is the best venue to vet and explain and express those interests.

So for example, if we were concerned about the copyright and other legal issues regarding the generation of grey literature, the use of grey literature, the availability of it,

one venue, for example, might be related to those issues, would be the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, which holds meetings twice a year dealing with the copyright and other legal matters issues. There are any number of NGOs there, including IFLA, IBLITA is there, the LCA, the Library Copyright Alliance from the United States,

a number of international and national organizations, the Canadian Library Association, the German Library Association is sometimes represented, a number of different organizations within the LIS community and across information in society like KEI is there.

And it's possible, for example, if that was an interest and a decided area of priority, that grey net could apply,

it's a free process to apply, a permanent observer, which would mean that it could then attend any of the sessions that WIPO holds. Copyright, licensing, and other legal matters might be the most relevant, but there are

also committees on other areas which can involve grey literature such as indigenous knowledge, intellectual property for development, there are a number of various committees that are held throughout the year, and again, prioritizing the interest and the demands, but this is just an example, there are many other examples of venues across the globe which might be relevant to grey literature,

again, depending upon how we prioritize and identify those issues, doing that first, then seeking a venue that might be the most relevant and the most efficient for expressing those issues.

And then I think once we decide we would like to do that, then I think developing some sort of an action plan, and we don't need to reinvent the wheel, I mean there are various committees in various LIS organizations that have developed these types of advocacy plans,

we might, of course, want to be very modest in what we choose to do initially, because I think we still are somewhat of a young organization, but I think we're old enough that we can think about taking on some of these other responsibilities if there's interest in the member groups,

and the survey seems to suggest that we should be a little more active in terms of promoting grey literature, whether it's to external policymakers or even within the LIS profession.

And so there are these types of blueprints that organizations like ALA and IFLA have developed action plans, of course, those entities are much larger than the grey community, much more organized and well

oiled in the sense of having boards of directors and working groups and ad hoc committees. So again, I think to be modest, but at least to make some effort in this area might be worthwhile. And again, the plan could be a multifaceted one, in that it may

present opportunities for individuals to make a commitment to be advocates for grey literature, but then also possibly within our own committee structure, tasks and challenges, and grain

it as a whole to represent the interests of our community to various policymakers. So I think the survey suggests that there's work that needs to be done, and that there is interest in doing that work. And I think in that sense, it was a very satisfying result to hear from the members, those that took the time to respond to those questions.

And I think certainly gives those committees and those others involved in the leadership of grey something to think about and perhaps develop over the next several years.

So thank you very much.