UCSF’s Industry Documents Library (IDL) celebrated a major achievement in January 2020 when we added the 15 millionth document to our collections. IDL has been growing steadily ever since it was established in 2002 with 5.5 million tobacco industry documents, and we’ve long been anticipating this milestone as we watched our page and document counts gradually increase with every monthly update.
The Industry Documents Library contains internal documents created by industries which impact public health, which have been made publicly available through litigation, public records act requests, and research and investigative journalism. IDL was initially founded to house the millions of documents produced in historic litigation against the major tobacco companies in the 1990s, and it’s now a global resource of information about industry activities relating to scientific research, manufacturing, marketing, public relations, and lobbying.
In addition to the original Truth Tobacco Industry Documents collection, IDL now includes significant archives on the drug, chemical, food, and fossil fuel industries. The 15 millionth document to be added to the library is a transcript of a videotaped deposition taken in the federal multi-district litigation currently proceeding against opioid manufacturers and distributors, which provides key information about opioid manufacturing, marketing, and sales practices and their impact on the opioid crisis in the United States.
Over 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles, news reports, documentaries, and government papers which cite the documents have been produced by an international research community on subjects including secondhand smoke, cigarette packaging, marketing to youth and other vulnerable populations, and industry interference in science and policymaking. Much of this work has been used to implement evidence-based tobacco control policies and regulations, efforts which are credited with saving millions of lives worldwide.
New documents are added to the Industry Documents Library every month. Upcoming releases include documents from hundreds of ongoing lawsuits against Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds; the papers of Harvard food and nutrition scientists Fredrick J. Stare and D. Mark Hegsted; and additional depositions from the National Prescription Opiate Litigation. Please sign up to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter to receive announcements of new document collections!