Helmut Drubba of the Technical Information Library in Hannover

Helmut Drubba of the Technical Information Library in Hannover playfully ended his fine survey of conference documentation by paraphrasing Irving Berlin-''There's no literature like conference literature. " 1 Certainly conference literature presents unique bibli~ graphic problems for both librarians and researchers. ISI@ recognized this fact when we introduced our Zndex to Scientific & Technical Proceedings 'M.z ZSTP'M covers about 3,000 proceedings each year in the physical, natural, and engineering sciences. Its rapid acceptance in its first year testifies to the need it serves. lSTP seems to have filled a vacuum in university, industrial, public, and government libraries. We have reason to believe that the enthusiastic reception of ISTP will be matched in 1979 by the response to our new Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings' " (ISSHP 'u). We expect ISSHP to be welcomed because conference proceedings have been difficult to locate and acquire in the pasts Finding individual papers delivered at a conference was even more time-consuming. The difficulties posed by the conference literature arise from several sources. One of the biggest problems is the time lag that develops between the date of the conference and the actual date of proceedings publication. According to P. R. Mills of the University of Bath, this time lag is especially long for the social sciences. q Librarians sometimes find they are spending time on fruitless searches for literature that has not yet been published. Another problem is that proceedings may be included in an issue of a society's journal or they may be published as multi-au-thored, hardbound books.'f Finally, proceedings (especially those in book form) may appear under titles that do not adequately describe their contents. For example , the title of a book may be Language and Mother-Child Zn-temction. Only in the preface is it revealed that the contents are all papers delivered at a conference on the psychology of language.