Conference Report: ALA

      	Previous	 	Contents	 	Next
	Issues in Science and Technology   Librarianship
	Fall 2001

	DOI:10.5062/F4GQ6VQQ



      

    Conference Reports
    Tour of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Library
  STS 2001 Program
  ALA Annual Conference, June 19, 2001
      James E. Crooks
  Health Sciences Librarian
  University of California, Irvine
jecrooks@lib.uci.edu        


     On Tuesday, June 19, the bus left the Moscone Convention Center at 9:00 a.m. on its  way to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) located three miles west of  the main campus of Stanford University. For most passengers, the tours of the  accelerator and library would be their last activity of the 120th annual meeting of  the American Library Association in San Francisco. 

    Doug Dupan, unofficial SLAC historian, opened the program with a brief history of  SLAC which was established in 1962 as a national facility for scientific research.   SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Dept. of Energy. There are  1300 employees, which includes about 150 physicists. In addition, physicists from  around the world are active users in SLAC research programs in the study of both  the basic constituents of matter and the forces acting between them. 

    Dr.Paul Kunz, SLAC physicist, described his role in the intriguing tale of  "Bringing the Web to America." SLAC had the first web site on the North American  continent; the content of the site was based on library resources. 

    The Virtual Visitor Center features a cosmic rays detector exhibit, which counts  the muons passing through the scintillation counters or sensors as well as passing  through visitors. Muons are produced when a proton hits the air in the earth's  upper atmosphere and lives long enough to reach the earth's surface. 

    The highlight of the day was walking tour of linac, the two-mile-long  linear electron accelerator. Completed in 1966, linac has the ability to  produce an electron beam of 20 billion volts. Additional construction has included  the Stanford Positron Electron Asymmetric Ring (SPEAR) and the Positron Electron  Project (PEP). A Brief History of SLAC describes SPEAR as the "most  cost-effective machine ever built in the field of high energy physics." Our tour  guides touted an impressive list of Nobel Prize winners who did their research at  SLAC. The most recent was Dr. Frederick Reines, University of California, Irvine,  who won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work in detecting neutrinos. 

    The visit to the library provided an in-depth look at collections and services.   During standard working hours, the SLAC Library is open for onsite use to the  Stanford campus community and the general public. Some services and equipment may  be restricted. The reference staff can assist readers in the use of materials and  of various on-line search services. SLAC Library staff will answer reference  questions from any user by sending e-mail to libcirc@slac.stanford.edu or   visit the web site.

    Preprints are available on the web in the SPIRES-HEP database. You may search the  catalog by multiple authors, title words, report numbers, date of posting, etc You  can print your own postscript copies of these preprints in Particles and Fields on  the web. 

    

  

  	Previous	 	Contents	 	Next