Finding Conference Papers for Your Science and Engineering Research

Conference papers are good places to find research from engineering or scientific societies or professional associations.  Often times research is presented at conferences before it is published in journal articles.  

To find conference proceedings you need to search a database that indexes conference proceedings.  Good places to start for engieering are Compendex, GeoBase, GeoRef, IEEE Xplore, INSPEC, or SciFinder Scholar. 

Once you have information about the conference paper like the title of the paper, the author, the name of the confernece, etc., check to see if the library owns that volume of the proceedings by searching the JHU Libraries Catalog. 

How to find conference proceedings in the JHU Libraries Catlog.

The proceedings from conferences, meetings, symposia, etc. can be difficult and frustrating to find in most library catalogs.  The reason is they don't fall clearly into either the book, journal or even series category.  Even seasoned researchers often have difficulty finding conference proceedings.  Be prepared to try several approaches and don't hesitate to ask a librarian for help.

Sometimes papers that are presented at conferences are also published in a societies' journals after the conference. It is helpful to be familiar with the society publications in your specific subject area.

To make matters even harder, complete proceedings are not always published.  Extended abstracts or digests of papers are some examples of what may be published in lieu of the complete proceedings. Or not all the papers that were presented at a conference always make it into the published proceedings. 

It helps to keep your sense of humor when searching for proceedings and be willing to try many different terms in your search. 

Tips for finding proceedings in the catalog:

1. Use the Advanced Keyword search feature in the catalog.
    
2. Always search for the proceedings title not the paper title. 
   
3. Search for the editor if there is one not the paper author.
   
4. If you are searching for a paper from a large conference producing organization, like ASME, try searching for the conference city as a general keyword. 
   
5. Can't find it, call your departmental librarian - don't spend hours trying to find something when you can call and ask for help. 

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Understand the citation. Below is a sample citation.

Bayazit, B., Hollingsworth, D., Witte, L., Heat Transfer Enhancement Caused by Sliding Bubbles; Proceedings of NHTC '01, 35th National Heat Transfer Conference, Anaheim California, June 10-12, 2001.  Sponsored by the Heat Transfer Division of ASME, American Institute of chemical Engineers (AIChE) and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) editors T.A. Bergman and C. B. Panchal. 

 This citation includes the following sections:

1. Paper Authors: Bayazit, Hollingsworth and Witte
   
2. Paper Title: Heat Transfer Enhancement Caused by Sliding Bubbles
   
3. Proceedings Title: Proceedings of the National Heat Transfer Conference 2001 (NHTC '01), 35th National Heat Transfer
   Conference
   
4. Proceedings Location: Anaheim, California
   
5. Proceedings Dates: June 10-12, 2001
   
6. roceedings Sponsors: ASME, AIChE, and AIAA
   
7. Proceedings Editors: Bergman and Panchal

When searching in the catalog use keywords from #3-#7 above to find the proceedings, do not use the paper author or paper title as keywords.

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If the library doesn't own the proceedings, it is possible to get papers through InterLibrary Services.  Always feel free to contact your departmental librarian if you have problems finding something.

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