Comparison of Meeting Indexes

Abstract

Conferences, symposiums, and other meetings offer the promise of current information in changing fields, but it is sometimes difficult to learn when and where they will take place, and what their participants discuss. Two types of reference sources that facilitate access to such information are calendar indexes of forthcoming meetings, and indexes to the published proceedings of meetings. This paper focuses on three calendar indexes to scientific and technological meetings—Scientific Meetings, MInd: The Meetings Index, and World Meetings. These compilations of meeting calendars offer researchers and librarians important guides for planning and for keeping up to date in specific subject areas. (Wolman [1983] suggests that users of chemical information consult World Meetings to keep abreast of meetings in that field.) Meeting calendar indexes also serve as important retrospective reference aids in verifying, for example, the occurrence of past meetings, or in confirming whether proceedings were, to be published. Guides to scientific, medical, and technologic information, and guides to reference sources, list the index features briefly (for example, Roper and Boorkman 1980, 89–92); however, no previous evaluative comparisons of the three indexes were found in the literature.

Citation

Whitley, K.M. (1987), "Comparison of Meeting Indexes", Reference Services Review, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 85-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb060341