U.S. Gov Docs: Technical Report Archive & Image Library (TRAIL) Expands Coverage and Welcomes Personal Members

From the Center for Research Libraries:

In a significant recent collection policy revision, TRAIL has officially eliminated its previous, somewhat artificial, selection cutoff date of 1975. TRAIL’s original guidelines called for collecting material published prior to 1975 only.
These were stretched almost immediately as it became evident that there was little reason to omit the last 10 reports in a series after digitizing the first 100 reports published prior to 1975. Completing a series was more important. In practice, TRAIL has added an increasing amount of content from the late 1970s and beyond.TRAIL will continue focus primarily on older material when it is available, but will no longer limit itself to any particular date range of material.
TRAIL (The Technical Report Archive & Image Library) was formed to meet the challenges of access to technical report literature, which is rapidly disappearing from library shelves and documents collections. TRAIL selects, digitizes, and deposits technical reports into trusted repositories; the HathiTrust and the University of North Texas (UNT) Digital Library. In 2010 TRAIL became part of the Global Resource Network (GRN) within CRL
The TRAIL Bylaws were recently amended to allow for Personal Memberships. This makes it possible for individuals at institutions that are not Institutional Members of TRAIL to have a way to participate in TRAIL’s Working Groups and activities.
While funding from Institutional Membership dues is essential in driving TRAIL’s work, individuals can make important contributions to TRAIL’s mission through their time and effort. Four librarians have already joined as TRAIL Personal Members.The complete list of TRAIL Members is here. Further information about joining TRAIL is available here.

Direct to TRAIL Search Interface
See Also: Learn More, Read TRAIL FAQs

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Digital Collections, Funding, Interactive Tools, Libraries, Open Access, Reports, Resources