Reflecting on Lesson 11 - Grey Literature?

What is Out There?  Grey Literature and the World Wide Web

Prior to lesson eleven I had never heard of the term “grey literature”.  The article from the University of California Berkeley provided me with a working definition of grey literature.  I was able to determine that grey literature is literature which is difficult if not impossible to find on the internet.  Do the large volume of information on the internet, it did not surprise me to find out that there is a vast amount of information which most individuals can not access.  However, I assumed that individuals could not find the information as a result of the amount that is out there, when in fact it is a result of the format of pages and ability of search engines.  I did not realize that certain types of websites are formatted using scripts and text which is not recognized by search engines.  The article did make this point clear by reminding me that search engines do not have the ability to think for themselves.  Therefore, it makes sense that a certain pages can not be accessed.

By learning about grey literature and how search engines function, it has made me more information literate.  Now when I conduct searches for information, I will know that the types of searches I perform may not be leading me to all of the information that is available to me.  If only 1 in 500 websites are accessible by the average search engine (Sullivan), I will have to be more diligent in what and how I search for literature on the internet.