This year, the Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference (NSREC) will provide each Short Course attendee with a copy of the Archive of Radiation Effects Short Course Notebooks on CD-ROM. The CD contains all NSREC Short Course notebooks from 1980 through 2002. It represents the complete collection – since NSREC began publishing the short course material.

The original CD collection was first printed in 1999.  We scanned 6100 pages of material from 19 old notebooks. It was a 5-month effort. Scanning was in black and white at 300 dpi, mostly from copies in my personal library.  Jim Ramsey and Ken Galloway contributed the older copies that were missing. To get those 6100 pages into a flatbed scanner, we had to cut loose the bindings.  As a result, our paper archive was dismantled for a good cause.  

After 1999, we went digital. Each instructor contributed their original manuscript, including color graphics. With the manuscripts in word processor format, the encoding process took seconds instead of months, allowing us to produce a CD in several hours.

One nice part about doing research with this CD-ROM collection is the “search engine” feature.  For example, if you search on the word “Fleetwood” the engine finds 321 entries.  Dan Fleetwood, IEEE Fellow, is one of our most quoted authors.  I have used the search engine to find all material that mentions “minority carrier lifetime” and “latchup” when I needed to become an instant expert on a topic.  The engine is nothing special, it is simply a part of the standard Adobe Acrobat Catalog software, which comes on the full edition of Acrobat.  Other search modes include ‘word stemming’ and ‘sounds like’ features, in addition to perfect matches.

Three universities are using the CD as their textbook for graduate level physics courses. When we ran out of CDs earlier this year, one professor (who could not wait for our updated version to come out) burned copies for his students on his CDRW, collected checks from each of his ten students, and sent the money to IEEE.  His email made my day.  The 100 (plus) instructors who contributed to this CD can be very proud that they are “passing the torch” to our next generation of radiation effects scientists. But then, this is what IEEE is all about.

A limited number of CDs can be purchased for $200 each ($160 for IEEE members) at the IEEE online Catalog&Store at http:// shop.ieee.org. Ask for IEEE product order code EC146, ISBN: 0-7803-6844-4.

Dale Platteter serves as Chairman of the Radiation Effects Steering Group, which oversees the NSREC Conference.  He is technical chair of the NPSS Radiation Effects Committee.  Dale can be reached at NAVSEA Crane, Code 605, Building 3334, Crane, IN 47522; Phone: +1 812 854-1206;  Fax: +1 812 854-1751; E-mail: platt@ieee.org