Looking for a digital copy of the Table of Radioactive Isotopes

[mesa]

Hello all, I am looking to get an electronic copy of the Table of Radioactive Isotopes by Edgardo Browne and Richard B. Firestone. I know that we can run software that incorporates this database here:

https://www2.lbl.gov/LBL-Programs/Gamquest.html

, but I am looking for an electronic copy to add to our software.

The current plan is to slice one of the books, gitally scanned, and then converted to text searchable format, but I would be willing to bet someone on PhysicsForum may be able to point us on the right direction.

I will happily pick up a Gold Membership for any PFer(s) that has useful information to this end!

 

[gmax137]

how's this?
https://www-nds.iaea.org/relnsd/vcharthtml/VChartHTML.html

Oops, maybe that won't help at all, sorry.

 

[Tom.G]

I was going to suggest you contact the program author. However the program is 26 years old so that may not be possible. Since it is a Federal Government laboratory, the sources are probably available to US citizens, and maybe to others.

The Books.Google.com sight says "no eBook available", and worldcat.org lists only print versions.

The source of the data, Table of Radioactive Isotopes, by Edgardo Browne and Richard B. Firestone, is 36 years old and over 1000 pgs. long. (note: Browne both wrote the book and directed the program development at LBL.)

If you can't get the data from LBL, the other options would be buy a print copy, around $300, then:
1) scan it and OCR it (probably farm it out to a service, they likely have better software)
2) send it to China for manual data entry (labor costs are a lot lower there)

Edgardo Browne, Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720 EBROWNE@LBL.Gov

Good Luck! ... and please let us know about any progress you make.
Tom

 

[mesa]

how's this?
https://www-nds.iaea.org/relnsd/vcharthtml/VChartHTML.html

Oops, maybe that won't help at all, sorry.

That database we have already scraped; now it can be used for most emission spectra that is found in this book, so a good call, but not quite what we are after.

 

[mesa]

I was going to suggest you contact the program author. However the program is 26 years old so that may not be possible. Since it is a Federal Government laboratory, the sources are probably available to US citizens, and maybe to others.

The Books.Google.com sight says "no eBook available", and worldcat.org lists only print versions.

The source of the data, Table of Radioactive Isotopes, by Edgardo Browne and Richard B. Firestone, is 36 years old and over 1000 pgs. long. (note: Browne both wrote the book and directed the program development at LBL.)

If you can't get the data from LBL, the other options would be buy a print copy, around $300, then:
1) scan it and OCR it (probably farm it out to a service, they likely have better software)
2) send it to China for manual data entry (labor costs are a lot lower there)

Edgardo Browne, Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720 EBROWNE@LBL.Gov

Good Luck! ... and please let us know about any progress you make.
Tom

Indeed, and most of those are options we are currently considering (e.g. why I now have two copies of the book).

Regardless, the suggestions are appreciated!

 

[Alex A]

I would suggest slicing a copy of the book to be unnecessary. On a simple flatbed scanner I usually managed about 90 pages an hour. OCRing that, editing and sanity checking the result is much more labour intensive process than the scanning, in my experience. However, since the data is in the program, that might be the easier way. If there is no 'dump all the data' command, can you enter a range so wide it dumps everything into an output file? Then the data is right and it's just a matter of formatting.

 

[anorlunda]

I missed the word slice in your OP. Yes, slicing is not necessary or easiest.
This article from Wired may help.

DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes

 

[Alex A]

In 1996 Wiley released "Table of Isotopes" by Firestone as a CD-ROM edition. It's a 124MB pdf, and *cough*libgen has it*cough*.

I'm not sure if it's what is required. Most of the 14k pages are like I'm staring at level diagrams in an ENSDF viewer. It has a table of gamma rays ordered by energy in Appendix D, but that is only 12 pages.

If scanning "Table of Radioactive Isotopes" is still the plan I wouldn't go to the trouble of building a book cradle. PlusTek OpticBook scanners exist which only need 90 degrees of access and will scan with almost no gap. Though you would need to check the model will scan the (oversize) pages of that edition. All they are is a flatbed with no lip on one side. Scan quality is slightly inferior to a good make of flatbed for the model I tried (3600 I think).

 

[mesa]

Some good tips, much appreciated.

Another avenue is to find the original data for the Gamma Ray Spectrum Catalogue(s) for germanium and silicon (and NaI) detectors and have the full spectrum data in our library and simply extract the information of interest for the look up tables. This option is becoming more attractive.

We came across the pdf version of this catalogue and a couple online searcher tools but not the original data set used to produce these spectrums. A few phone calls have been placed, but the last time there seems to be someone involved in the project was in the late 1990's to early 2000's.