Title: Arms Control Association

Source/Sponsoring Agency: Arms Control Association

URL: http://www.armscontrol.org/

Date Checked: 7/27/2012      Status: Active

Date Annotated: 3/1/2012

Topics: International Law

Other keywords: Arms control; Nuclear weapon; Treaties

Contents: The Arms Control Association (ACA) was founded in 1971 and is a national nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies. Through its public education and media programs and its magazine, Arms Control Today (ACT), ACA provides policy-makers, the press and the interested public with authoritative information, analysis and commentary on arms control proposals, negotiations and agreements, and related national security issues. The ACA has an excellent website that provides access to much of its work. It is searchable and provides the researcher with many ways in which to follow its activities through a variety of social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and Google+. The website is logically organized and easy for the researcher to maneuver through. Most of the information is available to the user without a fee, including access to the organization’s publications. From its homepage, interested researchers can quickly and easily see what’s new and have access to the current issue of Arms Control Today. Access to archived issues of this publication is also provided (back to 1996). Other content includes archived editorials back to 1996 and online indexes for 1991-2012. A librarian’s dream! Book reviews back to 2004 and Books of Note back to 2010 (list of books on point without full review) are also available on the ACA website. The organization has done an excellent job providing the researcher with both current and historical material. The Subject Resources page classifies the ACA material by topic. It includes important documents and treaties, ACA fact sheets, and relevant Arms Control Today news articles, features, and editorials. These pages are an excellent way to access everything you need to know about a particular aspect of arms control. Featured subjects—the biggies--like New START and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty are pulled up front, then a listing of all subjects organized alphabetically appears below the featured subjects. Country Resources allows the user to browse ACA resources by country. ACA offers in-depth profiles, fact sheets, and commentary from a range of arms control experts. ACA also has RSS feeds enabling its users to stay up to date on all the latest arms control news. This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in arms control, including scholars, professors, and academic librarians.

Author of Annotation: C. Hepler