Abbreviations for conference proceedings

Is there any way to define abbreviations for anything other than journals, say, conference names?

For journals, I’ve defined the abbreviations by going to Tools > Open Term Lists > Journals Term List, which is extremely useful. In my field, there are a number of conferences which have very long names if you write them out, but abbreviations which everyone in the field would recognize.

I’ve tried defining new Term Lists, but I can only add abbreviations if I check the “Journal List” box, and that doesn’t work with the field “Conference Name”. I’ve even tried linking fields (“Journal” and my newly created Term list), but that messed up all the Journal abbreviations.

I really don’t want to copy my current library and change all the references if not absolutely necessary, but that’s the only work-around I can see right now.

Any better suggestions would be highly appreciated!

PS: I’m using X7 and Word 2010.

Which generic field do the conference names end up in?  

I’m not exactly sure if that’s what you mean, but if I look it up in “Modify Reference Types”, the “Conference Name” corresponds to “Secondary Title” in the Generic reference type - does that answer your question, Leanne?

Yes.  I am trying to figure out why, if it is a “journal equivalent” (also a 2ndary title) why you can’t attach a journal type terms list to it then.  I will play around today a bit when I have time.  

Have you tried editing the journal terms list and adding your Conference name and putting the abbreviation you think colleagues would accept in the same field as the Abbreviation you are using in your output style?  Or even putting the Abbr in one of the columns and seeing if it gets replaced?  In a test I just did, it didn’t matter if it was a journal or not.  It replaced ABCD with testing1 in my bibliography when I put ABCD in full journal column and testing1  in the Abbreviation 1 column.  So I didn’t have to change any term list association, just add the conferences to that list?   

That worked! Nice, that was much easier than I thought…

I also had to uncheck the box “Abbreviate journal articles only” in the style template under journal names, but that is a nice feature to have.

Thanks a lot for your help!