Thanks to generous donations of AAA members to the Resource Development Committee (RDC), the AAA will soon launch an anthropology document portal that will allow anthropologists to archive their published and unpublished writings on the electronic storage facilities of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN, www.ssrn.com), a well-established digital warehouse. Further notice of how this archive will work will be published in an October AN article by SSRN President Gregg Gordon.

Specifically, the RDC funds allow the SSRN to create an “Anthropology and Archaeology Research Network” or an anthropological section. Collaboration with SSRN allows the widest possible range of researchers to access difficult-to-find anthropological publications and will provide anthropologists with new and broader access to indexed and searchable anthropological writings. Examples of literature that members and other anthropologists might deposit include preprints of published papers, but also unpublished papers, government or NGO reports prepared by anthropologists, archaeological survey reports, and draft manuscripts for collegial comment.

In addition to the establishment of an SSRN portal, AAA also encourages archaeologists to deposit data and the related publications that make that data meaningful in the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) Available at www.tdar.org, tDAR is an international digital archive and repository that houses data about archaeological investigations, research, resources and scholarship. It has a plan for long-term preservation and ongoing access to digital data.

Working with SSRN and tDAR, the RDC Gray Literature subcommittee has also focused on expanding access to anthropological and related literature that has been difficult to know about and find. This project, currently in development, is a set of anthropology-related web links on the AAA resources page that will facilitate member use of the gray literature not published or indexed in usual book and journal sources, but available on government and NGO websites, eg, National Center for Health Statistics, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and the World Bank. The specific links included will be provided by the AAA sections as most relevant to their specialty. Links will be reviewed annually by sections to assure that they continue remain useful and functional. These projects should build awareness and access to anthropological research and knowledge within and beyond the discipline.

The RDC is chaired by Louise Lamphere, the Gray Literature subcommittee by Robert Hahn; other subcommittee members are T J Ferguson, Shirley Fiske, and Oona Schmid (AAA Liaison).