Attending conferences is a popular way of staying current and networking with colleagues. Follow conference hashtags on social media to network and keep up to date with conference presentations, speakers and events.

Conference proceedings are the collected papers which are published following a conference.

Conference papers contain research that may not have made it into a book or journal yet, so may include the latest developments in a particular field.

Many subject-specific databases index conference proceedings. See 'Finding Conference Proceedings' on this page and check your own specialist subject databases.

Locating papers delivered at conferences can sometimes be difficult, but they can often be the only record of vital new research results. Some useful conference listings include:

• All Conferences.com A directory focusing on conferences, conventions, trade shows, exhibits, workshops, events and business meetings.

• Conference Alerts: Academic Conferences Worldwide provides a searchable online database and a monthly alerts service to help you stay informed about forthcoming academic and professional events.

• Conference Services Scientific conferences

• H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online News lists, including conferences

• IEEE Conferences & Meetings Innovation and technology

• Web of Conferences is an open access platform devoted to scientific, technical and medical conferences.It offers services for the publication and dissemination of conference proceedings.

• Conferences for Digital Humanities, Digital Archives, Digital Libraries, and Digital Museums: An open Google calendar that lists meetings, symposia, seminars, institutes, and conferences aimed at professionals and students who are doing digital work in the humanities.     

Many papers and posters presented at conferences are never published.  However, they may be cited by people who attended the conference. Sometimes you may find that the author has published the substance of the paper in a later work, so you no longer need the conference paper. However if this doesn't apply, you can:

• Search to see if a version of the paper is in an institutional repository
• Contact the author direct to request a copy of the paper

A call for papers (CFP) is used in academic context for collecting book or journal articles and conference presentations. A CFP usually describes a theme, the occasion for the CFP, and formalities such as the submission process.

The following resources are a good starting point to finding calls for papers and conference announcements across multiple disciplines:

WikiCFP

Conal Conference Alerts

Call4paper

Many databases index conference proceedings

• OCLC PapersFirst: Provides access to individual papers presented at conferences worldwide
• Scopus: Limit by Document Type: conference
• Web of Science: scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, and includes the proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops
• OneSearch: Refine your results to Conference Proceedings under 'Resource Type'
• British Library has a large repository of international conference proceedings
• Google Scholar can help you locate individual conference papers or entire proceedings
• Search the internet: Some proceedings are freely available online. Try searching for the title as a phrase using quotation marks (" "). Many organisations have papers from past conferences on their websites.