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Another form unique to the field of Engineering is the conference proceeding. These are the content papers that the speakers use to give their presentations and are often, but not always, made available via the organization that is sponsoring the conference. Much like technical reports, conference proceedings, also known as congresses, symposiums, and conference papers are often inconsistently cited and cited differently than they are catalogued.
Although conference proceedings can be catalogued as monographs or as series, the collection at the UW Engineering Library is catalogued as monographs. Still, this does not make them any easier to find than if they were catalogued as series. Generally, the same sources generate conference proceedings: associations and societies. So, once again, the best information to have, short of a complete and accurate citation, is the name of the organization that actually put on the conference. One caveat: do not merely rely on the date of the conference to find a particular conference proceeding. Often times, this is not enough to get the patron what s/he needs.
Keep in mind that the best way to search for conference proceedings is to do a keyword search. Use the name of the sponsoring organization and such terms as term, "proceedings," "conferences," "symposiums," or "papers" in the search. If all else fails, try entering any combination of whatever you do have (that can be gleaned from a reference interview) by doing a keyword search with the year of conference with the name of the sponsoring organization. If you are unsure whether the item you are looking for is a conference proceeding, follow the search process for journal articles. For additional information on obtaining conference proceedings, visit the link to Conference Papers for other resources. At the same time, keep in mind that the majority of conferences are catalogued as monographs. One last thing to remember is that just because a patron comes in claiming a proceeding exists, it does not necessarily mean it is available. Sometimes, the proceedings are only available to conference attendees. Or, it could mean that the presenter never ended up submitting anything to be published. Finally, as with collection development in general, budgetary constraints restrict what the library is able to obtain. So, the specific proceedings may exist, but the library just does not own it.