Growing importance of conference proceedings in astronomy and astrophysics and its impact on collection development

Abstract

This paper analyses the change in the referencing pattern among the astronomers. There has been an increase in the number of conference proceedings (CP) during the last 10 years. In astronomy alone there were around 131 international conference proceedings in 1980 and it rose to 267 in 1990. The number of references to conference proceedings have also increased. In Astrophysical Journal, the reference to conference proceedings papers has increased from 1.48 in 1980 to 3.80 in 1990, an increase of about 150%. In view of this importance, the paper discusses the problems encountered by librarians in acquiring proceedings volumes in limited-budget countries like India.