An archive is a collection of documents. The term is also used for the place where the documents are stored and for the institution which stores and preserves them.
Informal sources which were not published by commercial publishers are often called “grey literature”.
Archives
Documents collected in archives can for example be protocols, letters or account books. The documents are stored in different media, e.g. paper, microfilm or magnetic tape. Archives can be available in part or in whole on the Internet.
Den Nationella Arkivdatabasen (NAD)
The national archives database contains information on archival records in Swedish archives, libraries and museums. It exists on CD-ROM and is being transferred to the Internet.
The national archives have the supervision of all public records of the agencies of the central government.
The research center SVAR (Swedish archival information) is a unit within the national archives. Among other things, its task is to make archival material accessible for research and education.
Follow the link below to read more about archives. There you will find, among other things, a guide for the Swedish archival organization and links and addresses for archives.
Grey literature
They can for example be conference papers, preprints, working papers, market surveys, leaflets, investigations etc. The publisher can be e.g. universities, authorities, organizations or companies. Publishing is not their primary activity. Grey literature can be printed or electronic.
Grey literature may not sound very exiting, but it can contain a lot of interesting and valuable information which is not published elsewhere. A small part of the grey literature is published in regular publishing after some time, but then it has often been edited, and important details about research methods and experiments might have been excluded. Then the grey literature is the only information source.
Jenny Löfkvist
2005-06-28
