How to manage conference proceedings in BiBTeX?

The recommended way is to have a @proceedings entry for the "book" (with editor, conference date, venue, ISBN, and so forth) and then @inproceedings entries for every paper. In the @inproceedings entries you refer via crossref to the @proceedings entry.

@inproceedings{singaravelu:06:eurosys,
  author =       {Singaravelu, Lenin and Pu, Calton and H{\"a}rtig, Hermann and Helmuth, Christian},
  title =        {Reducing TCB complexity for security-sensitive applications: three case studies},
  crossref =     {eurosys:06},
  pages =        {161--174},
  doi =          {10.1145/1217935.1217951},
  keywords =     {application security, trusted computing base},
}

@inproceedings{padioleau:06:eurosys,
  author =       {Yoann Padioleau and Julia L. Lawall and Gilles Muller},
  title =        {Understanding Collateral Evolution in {Linux} Device Drivers},
  crossref =     {eurosys:06},
  pages =        {59--71},
  doi =          {10.1145/1218063.1217942},
  keywords =     {Coccinelle},
}

@proceedings{eurosys:06,
  editor =       {Yolande Berbers and Willy Zwaenepoel},
  title =        "Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Computer Systems",
  booktitle =    "Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Computer Systems",
  publisher =    {ACM}
  venue =        {Leuven, Belgium},
  month =        apr,
  year =         {2006},
  isbn =         {1-59593-322-0},
}

With this structure, if you cite a paper (@inproceedings entry), BibTeX will either import the missing information from the crossref'ed @proceedings entry into the paper's entry inside the bibliography or, if more than two papers from the same proceedings are referenced, save some space by putting the @proceedings entry itself into the bibliography and refer from the paper's entries to them.

(The threshold of two is the default; this is configurable on the bibtex command line with the -min-crossrefs=NUMBER option.)

Caveats

• With many bibtex implementations, the @proceedings entry has to be placed behind the respective @inproceedings entires in the bib-file. Otherwise it is not found.

• The duplication of title and booktitle is a strange necessity. If BibTex imports the missing field into the @inproceedings entry, it needs the booktitle field. If the @proceedings entry is itself referenced (either implicitly through the threshold or explicitly by a \cite command) it needs the title field.

• With BibLaTeX, the principle remains the same. In combination with biber, we can get rid of the above idiosyncrasies, though.