Conferences and Proceedings  

Conference proceedings are valuable primary sources of information. Papers presented at conferences, congresses, and symposia provide access to original research before the search results are published in journal literature; these papers frequently provide the first or only place where a specific research result is presented. Bibliographic control of such information is provided by two types of sources, those which provide notification of the holding of meetings, and indexes which identify conference papers and proceedings. Conference proceedings may be published as monographs, reports, preprints, journal issues, etc. and are sometimes published years after the meeting; proceedings are published for approximately two-thirds of all conferences, and some are published only in abstract form. The following sources provide access to information on meetings and to the published conference literature.