Conference Proceedings (PAMS reference)
From WolfWikis
Conference Proceedings are records of research conferences. They could take the form of a bound volume of all papers presented at the conference. They might also just be abstracts. Or even less, just an outline of the schedule and proposed sessions. Nevertheless, researchers often cite conference proceedings, and these references can be notoriously difficult to track down. Sometimes this is because there's no physical paper to track down--the researcher may be citing a talk they heard which was never transcripted!
Even when the papers are published as proceedings, they can be difficult to locate because they may be indexed in a number of different ways.
Locating proceedings
The NCSU Libraries have a very good collection of proceedings, but there are far too many conferences to collect everything. Further, they are not always published regularly or formally, and consequently may not be collected by the library as easily. You may need librarian help to locate them, so don't hesitate to ask. It can often take some degree of luck and serendipity to find them. But here's a general procedure.
- Start with a keyword search in the library catalog for whatever conference title information you have. If you get results, make sure that the item(s) we have match the conference dates and title.
- You can also try a title search for the conference, an author search, or search for the exact paper you want. (At this point, we're hoping to find something in a table of contents.)
- If we don't have the proceedings, do a quick internet search to see if they aren't available online. Doubtful, but this works for the occasional conference. If not, make a Tripsaver request for the proceedings.
- Alternatively, try a literature search for the author(s). Quite often, research that was first presented as conference proceedings later turns up in regularly-published journal articles.