Conferences

James Shaw and Sue Bird

WISER Finding Stuff

Conferences allow you to:

Finding conferences

Tools for identifying conferences

E-MAIL ALERTS

General Websites:

Societies and Organizations

Web 2.0 tools for monitoring conferences

Finding conferences

Finding Published Output

Finding proceedings• Often difficult because of variety of ways of publishing• May be no Proceedings, but selected papers published

separately• No comprehensive listing• Check:

• Library catalogues• Organisation’s websites• Conference databases• Subject databases• People who went

Locating conference papers

• If you are given a reference to a conference paper that doesn’t mean it was necessarily published!

• Recent papers might be on web – try searching on the paper title, author, organisation name or the conference name

• Sometimes you can quite easily track down the author and they will send you a copy

• If conference papers are not available in Oxford the Library Services can usually get hold of it for you through inter-library loan

Searching library holdings in Oxford University

• When searching SOLO for a conference paper you need to search for the proceedings of the conference rather than the specific paper

• Conferences are treated as corporate authors• Published proceedings may have different title to the

original • Publisher may be different from conference organiser

OLIS

• OLIS has no option to limit by document type so you need to use keyword search and include ‘proceedings’ ‘conference’, ‘symposium’ etc as keywords alongside subject terms

• Use tw= for words in title if a straight title search is fruitless• Most conferences in the collections will have a Subject

Heading which includes ‘Congresses’• So best to search for keyword(s) in titles and subjects, and

for Congresses in LC Subjects, e.g:

Other Library catalogues

• See OXLIP+ under Library Catalogues• Especially useful for UK is COPAC

or British Library Catalogue

• You can ask for Inter-library loan of identified conferences

British Library• The British Library integrated catalogue includes over 400,000

conference proceedings on a variety of subjects

• Go to the British Library integrated catalogue home page • Choose "Search the integrated catalogue" • Click “Catalogue subset search” from the top bar • Then choose “Document Supply Conferences” from the list.

Conferences at the British Library

• The British Library catalogue can be searched at catalogue.bl.uk/ and catalogue subset search allows you to limit to conference proceedings

• The ZETOC service – http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/ provides access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC). The database contains details of approximately 20,000 current journals and 16,000 conference proceedings published per year. With almost 15 million article and conference records, the database covers every imaginable subject in science, technology, medicine, engineering, business, law, finance and the humanities. The database covers the years from 1993 to date and is updated daily. Copies of all the articles and conference papers listed on the database are available from the British Library's Document Supply Centre in Yorkshire.

To take advantage of the ZETOC Alerts service you will need O.S.S.

Google & Google Scholar

• Use Google for locating announcements of forthcoming conferences

• No controlled vocabulary, so search for ‘conference’ and also synonyms – meeting, symposium, congress etc

• Prefer Google Scholar for conference papers

Conference Paper Indexes• CPCI – Conference Proceedings Citation Index

– now incorporated into Web of Science• Conference Papers Index – available through

CSA Illumina• PapersFirst and ProceedingsFirst – available

through OCLC FirstSearch• Find all these on OxLIP+

ISI Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings (1990-) (Conference Proceedings Citation Index)

• CPCI indexes the published literature of the most significant conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions in a wide range of disciplines in science and technology.

• CPCI covers only publications in which the proceedings are published for the first time, and only those which contain complete papers, not just abstracts.

• Coverage includes international proceedings, and is not limited to those in the English language.

• Published proceedings may be included from a number of sources; books or series produced by publishers or societies, reports, sets of preprints (when preprints are the only publications from a conference) or journals.

• More than 12000 conferences are added with annually – in 2007 this meant some 452,00 individual papers from the most significant conference literature in science and technology.

Conference Papers Index (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)

Conference Papers provides citations to papers and poster sessions presented at major scientific meetings around the world.

• Subject emphasis since 1995 has been in the life sciences, environmental sciences and the aquatic sciences, while older material also covers physics, engineering and materials science.

• Information is derived from final programs, abstracts booklets and published proceedings, as well as from questionnaire responses.

• Records include complete ordering information to obtain preprints, abstracts, proceedings and other publications derived from the conference, together with title and author information needed to track the specific papers.

• Available through OxLIP+

PapersFirst• OCLC index of papers presented at conferences worldwide

• Covers every published congress, symposium, conference, exposition, workshop and meeting received by The British Library Document Supply Centre.

• Database details

• SubjectsThe wide variety of subjects discussed at the covered meetings.

• Sources Included in each record.

• Number of records: Over 6,500,000

• Dates covered: 1993 to present

• Updated: Semimonthly (twice a month)

• Available through OXLIP+

(search title index or under general bibliographic tools)

Proceedings First [OCLC]

• Covers every published congress, symposium, conference, exposition, workshop and meeting received by The British Library Document Supply Centre.

• Contains in each record a list of the papers presented at each conference. • Subjects: conference proceedings, meetings, congresses, symposia,

exhibitions, workshops• Sources Included in each record.• Number of records: 192,000+• Dates covered: 1993 to present• Updated: Semiweekly (twice a week)• Available through OXLIP+• and search title index or under general bibliographic tools

Subject databasesMost subject-specific bibliographic databases include conference papers

and proceedingsFind those relevant to your subject via OxLIP+

You can check subject and general databases (via OxLIP+) for options to limit by conference as document type eg:

SCOPUSOVIDSP for Biosis Previews & GeoRefCSA Illumina for Sociological AbstractsOpenSIGLE : System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts)Engineering Index – CompendexWeb of ScienceINSPEC (for physics)

Repositories• Institutional and subject-based repositories being

developed

Oxford: Oxford Research Archive http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/ora

Search them via: OAIster http://www.oaister.org

Google / Google Scholar

SCIRUS http://www.scirus.com (or via OXLIP+)

The most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web. With over 350 million scientific items indexed at last count, it allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists' homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information.

Newspapers• Often report on major conferences, usually while

being held• Frequently do not give any indication of where

proceedings / website can be found• Search newspapers through Nexis UK, available on

OxLIP+• Totally international with worldwide coverage

– not just UK

Quoting• Be consistent and follow a standard system, e..g.

Harvard, when referring to papers or proceedings.• Give as much detail as possible – remember how much

trouble you had finding it! An accurate reference will help others.

• Generally include:• Author(s) of paper - surname and initials Year of publication, 'Title of

paper - in single quotation marks' [in] Editor (if applicable), Title of published proceeding which may include place held and date(s) - italicised, Publisher, Place of publication, Page numbers.

To summarise• Identify relevant organisations and mailing lists for information on

upcoming conferences• Many papers are available online • Search library catalogues for print holdings• Use Inter-library loan service for printed items not held locally• There are specific databases for conference proceedings • Many general or subject indexing databases allow you to search

for conference proceedings• Your subject librarian is always ready to help - see

http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/collections/librarians

WISER Archive

• This and most of the other presentations in the WISER programme are available on the OULS site:

http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/information_skills