Alsos celebrates its ten year anniversary with inclusion in the Library of Congress' Research Collection

The United States Library of Congress has selected the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues (http://alsos.wlu.edu) as a website for inclusion in its collection of Internet materials of historical importance to the Congress and the American people.

Alsos was created by a team of students led by Dr. Frank Settle, chemistry professor, at Washington and Lee University, which also includes Dr. Thomas Whaley, professor of computer science, and editorial consultants Dr. Elizabeth Blackmer and Ms. Judy Strang.  It has become a recognized resource for educators, students, professionals and the general public on all matters nuclear.

“I think this reflects the high quality of the content and the excellent work of 50 W&L students over the past ten years,” said Settle. “It also means that our work will be preserved for future generations.”

Alsos can be found at www.alsos.wlu.edu. It provides an annotated bibliography of over 3,000 books, articles, films, CDs, and websites about a broad range of nuclear issues. It covers not only today’s hot button issues such as nuclear proliferation,  nuclear waste and terrorism, but also nuclear topics in 25 disciplines including medicine, science, literature, economics, art and music.

Visitors to the website can also locate the nearest library where the publication is stocked, or download it if it is available online.

Alsos has a 27-member national advisory board that includes 14 top academics as well as representatives from the Council on Foreign Relations, Los Alamos National Laboratory, U.S. Army, Natural Resources Defense Council, Smithsonian, American Institute of Physics, George C. Marshall Foundation, Global Security, and the Pacific Northwest Laboratory. 

Hundreds of libraries, colleges, schools and research institutes worldwide already provide links to Alsos, as well as normal search engines and Wikipedia. 

Alsos takes its name from the U.S. Army mission to assess German progress on the atomic bomb during WWII.  The website was funded by $1.2 million in grants from the National Science Foundation and Mr. Gerry Lenfest.  It was one of the first collections to be funded by the NSDL program.