The Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues is a searchable collection of vetted annotations and bibliographic information for resources including books, articles, films, CD-ROMs, and websites pertaining to nuclear topics. Part of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

National Science Digital Library National Science Digital Library (NSDL) of the United States is an open-access online digital library A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collectio ...

(NSDL) and located at

Washington and Lee University Washington and Lee University (Washington and Lee or W&L) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia, United States. Established in 1749 as Augusta Academy, it is among ...

, the

digital library A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection) is an online database of digital resources that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital ...

provides a balanced selection of high quality resources across many disciplines to a broad audience including students, scholars, professionals, and the general public. Originally focused on the history of the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

, the library has expanded to include the far-reaching consequences of the discovery of atomic energy, including topics such as

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

, and

nuclear proliferation Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries, particularly those not recognized as List of states with nuclear weapons, nuclear-weapon states by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonl ...

.Frank A. Settle ''et al.'' ''The Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues'' Accessed 06-11-2009.

History

Publicly available since 2001, the Alsos library has been headed since its inception by chemist Dr. Frank Settle. The name Alsos honors the Allied Alsos Mission during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

to discover the extent to which Germany had progressed with its atomic bomb project. Funding has been provided by the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

and H. F. Lenfest. Undergraduate students have built and provided the content for the library, supervised by a computer science professor and an editor.

Features

The Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues contains over 3,500 annotations, which have been reviewed by members of its National Advisory Board of experts in many disciplines. Its entries are both searchable as full-text and hierarchically browsable in six major categories: issues, science, warfare, people, places, and disciplines. Bibliographic resources that are available on the Internet have links provided; library locations of non-electronic resources nearest to the user are also available via

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

Partnerships

In order to integrate its extensive bibliographic information with web-based content on nuclear issues, the Alsos team has worked in partnership with other high quality websites to create a gateway to nuclear resources online, Nuclear Pathways. That website provides federated searches of the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues, Atomic Archive, Nuclear Files, and the

nuclear chemistry Nuclear chemistry is the sub-field of chemistry dealing with radioactivity, nuclear processes, and transformations in the nuclei of atoms, such as nuclear transmutation and nuclear properties. It is the chemistry of radioactive elements such as t ...

component of ChemCases; resources include bibliographies, biographies, time lines, policy analyses, explanations of the history and science of nuclear weapons, nuclear chemistry lessons, study guides, syllabi, and extensive collections of historical primary source documents, photographs, audio, and film clips.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://alsos.wlu.edu/ *
Washington and Lee University

Atomic Archive

National Science Digital Library

Nuclear Files

Nuclear Pathways
Nuclear technology Science and technology in the United States American digital libraries