THE ACQUISITION OF CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY LENDING DIVISION

Conference proceedings are difficult to acquire due to the lack of adequate bibliographic control. The procedures used by the Lending Division to overcome the problems are described and the major bibliographical tools are evaluated. The most useful are the ‘Directory of Published Proceedings’ and ‘World Meetings’ but these are far from comprehensive. Conference proceedings are expensive to acquire, but expenditure on them by the Lending Division is justified by the demand, 170,000 requests in 1978. A useful spin‐off from the Lending Division's collection is the ‘Index of Conference Proceedings’ which, although it does not give publication details, is the most comprehensive list of published proceedings available.