Pacific Island Gray Literature Project
About the Project
One of the challenges of PRAISE is the identification and dissemination of gray literature originating from the Pacific Islands. Gray literature is the body of reports, studies, surveys, workshops, etc. often produced by local government agencies, private organizations and educational facilities, which have not been reviewed and published in journals or other standard publications and thus are not widely available for study. These documents often contain valuable and unique information which is not found elsewhere. The result is that a large pool of scientific and economic information is seldom accessed by the research community.
The inaccessibility of gray literature is a particularly serious problem in the Pacific Islands where there are relatively few libraries and other organizations responsible for the collection and dissemination of information. A wealth of reports are produced throughout the Pacific Islands that are never integrated into the standard literature vehicles like journals or conference proceedings. This has two undesirable results. First, valuable data is not shared throughout the region. Second, important work done in the region is not shared with the rest of the worlds scientific community, thus regional work does not get the recognition that it deserves. Aquaculture, fisheries, and coastal management have been important issues in the Pacific Islands for some time. As economic and technological developments propel the Islands into the modern age these issues are rapidly gaining in ecological and economic significance. Preservation of and access to regional information gathered in the past is important to research being done now and planned for the future. Likewise access, preservation, and dissemination of present and future information will continue to be a priority as the region develops.
Under the supervision of PRAISE staff, the documents are organized and distributed to: Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii, National Agricultural Library(NAL), and when relevant, to the Library and Information Services Division of NOAA. The material is indexed in AGRICOLA the database of NAL and Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) produced by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. The material may be searched selectively in AGRICOLA by using the search term PAGL.
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