The European Round Table for Synchrotron Radiation and Free Electron Laser is an initiative supported by the European Commission. Its main purpose is to encourage the exchange of information between large-scale SR and FEL facilities and European researchers on subjects of common interest, complementing national and international efforts in this area.
The Round Table fulfills its purpose through a series of meetings, workshops and other initiatives. Its mission includes four primary objectives:
Many other activities are supported, fully or partially, by the Round Table. The first one is the development and the maintenance of the homepage of Synchrotron Radiation and FEL sources, which you are now visiting.
Another one is the development and maintenance of a web browsable database of Synchrotron Radiation and FEL facilities and Users. The scope is to continue to update and expand the database on synchrotron light and FEL facilities, within and outside Europe, and to adopt new communication techniques to make such a database widely available and open to new techniques for interactive and continuous update. These actions in the domain of documentation are the necessary prerequisite for the timely and realistic assessment - by the Round Table and by other relevant bodies - of the needs for access to FEL and synchrotron facilities. This is a critical issue at the present time, because of the mounting evidence of a world-wide shortage of high-quality beamtime. Besides, the documentation and its effective access have a considerable value on their own.
Other experimental services for the user community are currently under development.
The primary objective is the documentation of research resources to make their access simpler.
Finally, we intend to open new channels of communications with facilities in these domains operating outside the EC area.