ATLAS stands for the American Theological Library Association Serials Project, an undertaking by the American Theological Library Association. Its purpose is to digitize 50 years' worth of 50 journals that deal with the academic study of religion and make them accessible from the Web. In some cases, where a journal as been in existence for more than 50 years, ATLAS may include the entire run of the journal. On May 20, 1999, ATLA announced that it had received a grant from the Lilly Foundation to develop and sustain the ATLAS project for three years.

ATLA indexes over 600 of the leading journals in the field of religion. Approximately 50 of those journals have been selected for digitization in the ATLAS project. ATLAS personnel have worked with the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion in order to select outstanding journals in the following six areas: Bible, Archaeology, and Antiquities; Theology, Philosophy, and Ethics; Religions and Religious Studies; Pastoral Ministry; History, Missions, and Ecumenism; Human Culture and Society.

The selected ATLAS journals are digitized into two formats: encapsulated images and fully encoded texts. In the first case, page images of each journal are wrapped in a metadata "envelope" that  allow users to search the collection for articles written by particular authors, that contain certain words in the title, that deal with specific topics, or that treat selected passages of various religious texts. Page images with XML envelopes (using Ebind) are available first, since preparation time is so short - relatively speaking - for this format. High resolution versions of the images are archived for preservation purposes.

In the second case, the journals are encoded in XML, in a DTD related to the SGML, TEI DTD. The XML browsers that are being developed currently may be available to scholars shortly. But it is possible that on the fly translation from XML to HTML will be necessary as a short-term solution for scholars whose Web browsers will not read XML. The fully encoded texts allow users to search on all these fields and more!  Furthermore, users are able to perform simple full text searches, Boolean searches (i.e., using AND, OR, and NOT), and proximity searches (i.e., Word A within 10 words of Word B). The search engine itself is based on the ATLA Religion Database - the information found in Religion Index One - the most extensive and highly regarded index of religious periodical literature published. Selected electronic journals are included also in the ATLAS project.

Access to ATLAS journals is offered to both institutions and individuals. Users who work or live near an institutional subscriber to ATLAS will be able to use the institution's facilities to read ATLAS journals online. ATLAS offers access to individual scholars, students, clergy, and other interested people, and even those affiliated with institutional subscribers who will want to consider an individual subscription for access from the home or office. Individual access is offered at a very affordable rate. People who are members of the ATLAS Societal Partners (i.e., Learned Societies who make agreements with ATLAS administration) receive a reduced rate.