The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Industry Documents Library (IDL) encountered a range of challenges in 2025, shared in many respects by our colleagues in libraries, institutional partners, researchers and the broader communities we serve. We were sustained by the exemplary dedication to public health demonstrated across the IDL community. Furthermore, we maintained a consistent focus on meeting the needs of our users. Through new collections, instructional programming, significant website enhancements, and continued cultivation of strong institutional partnerships, we continued to advance the UCSF IDL’s mission for the public good.
This year in review highlights the UCSF IDL’s key accomplishments and contributions in 2025.
By the numbers
New collections
Juul Labs Collection
The Juul Labs Collection (Multistate Settlement): includes over two million internal documents subject to public disclosure as part of Juul Labs’s 2023 multi-state settlement with California, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.
Endo Documents
The Endo Documents are part of the UCSF-Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Opioid Industry Documents Archive. This growing collection will include approximately four million internal documents disclosed through litigation against Endo, a pharmaceutical company which sold billions of opioid pills over two decades including Percocet and Opana ER.
Gardasil Litigation Documents
The Gardasil Litigation Documents include court documents and expert reports with exhibits from the 2025 lawsuit Robi v Merck & Co, Inc., et al. The plaintiff alleged that Merck’s Gardasil vaccine could cause autoimmune disorders and that the company failed to warn doctors and the public.
Poison Papers
The Poison Papers are thousands of documents obtained from federal agencies and chemical manufacturers through open records requests and public interest litigation.
Forever Pollution Project Collection
The Forever Pollution Project Collection includes more than 14,000 documents obtained by a consortium of European Union journalists and relate to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), a class of synthetic chemicals widely used in industrial and consumer products.
Award-winning website redesign
The new UCSF Industry Documents Library website launched in September 2025. The redesigned site provides a refreshed and modern interface, greater accessibility, faster performance, and new search features and guides. UCSF IDL archivists hosted a website open house to highlight the websites improvements and tips for searching on September 9, 2025.
The redesign project involved user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) research, design, and implementation for a system containing over 26 million documents that encompass diverse formats. There were challenges around accommodating different formats (audio files, PowerPoint slides, text documents, etc.) so all are viewable in the same interface. For the skillful execution of this project, the UCSF IDL team won the Silver Design Award at the 2025 UC Tech Awards.
Outreach and education
The IDL team presented the collections and activities and engaged with audiences that include academic researchers, journalists, public health advocates, and library professionals. Key engagements included:
- Corporate Drivers of Disease: Exploring the UCSF Industry Documents Library, a co-presentation with UCSF faculty Tracey Woodruff, PhD, MPH, and Nicholas Chartres, PhD, MHumNutr, for the Collaborative for Health & Environment.
- Arc/Hive: Documenting Three Decades of Community, Collective Care, and Crisis tabling event for harm reduction organizations in Northern California organized by the Opioid Crisis Community Archive team.
- National Conference on Tobacco or Health (NCTOH) in-person and hands-on workshop for public health professionals and other researchers held in Chicago, Illinois. The workshop was a collaboration with the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE) and with the support of our long-standing partners at the Truth Initiative. Attendees learned how to search the redesigned IDL website for documents useful for their work. The IDL was also highlighted by Pamela Ling, MD, MPH, UCSF CTCRE director, during the NCTOH keynote panel presentation.
Notable collaborations
The Industry Documents Library is honored to collaborate with distinguished experts at UCSF and other renowned institutions, fostering impactful partnerships.
- UCSF Archives and Special Collections (ASC) – Regular collaborations with UCSF archivists on developing shared digital preservation workflows and long-term data storage solutions, outreach events including the OCCA Arc/Hive event, the Advancing Digital Health Humanities Institute, the UCSF Library Artist in Residence program, supporting the 2025 It’s About a Billion Lives Symposium in partnership with CTCRE, and more. Read about their notable accomplishments in the 2025 ASC Year in Review.
- UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE) – Ongoing collaboration to support industry documents research by CTCRE faculty and postdocs, co-sponsor the Annual Tobacco and Other Industry Documents Workshop, and expand the use of the IDL for teaching and education.
- Center to End Corporate Harm – Worked closely with UCSF colleagues at the Center to End Corporate Harm, a cross-disciplinary effort that brings scientists studying various health-harming industries together to identify, analyze, and prevent industry-driven disease.
- University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill – The Juul Labs Collection, a project with library colleagues at UNC Chapel Hill that provides public access to nearly 3 million documents made public as a result of North Carolina’s settlement was completed.
- Johns Hopkins University (JHU) – A continued collaboration to build the UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive, which now holds more than 6 million documents.
Publications and news
20 academic articles published in 2025 cited documents from the UCSF IDL, including several by UCSF research teams:
News items featuring the Industry Documents Library include:
Looking ahead
As we look ahead to 2026, the UCSF Industry Documents Library reaffirms it’s commitment to preserving and providing free public access to materials that illuminate corporate practices that influence health. We will continue to expand our collections and strengthen support our incredible research community through additional website functionality enhancements, enriching data resources, comprehensive search guides, and interactive workshops and events.
In an era challenged by misinformation and declining public trust in institutions, the UCSF Industry Documents Library remains steadfast in its dedication to truth, accountability and the advancement of health worldwide.
Support our work
The UCSF Industry Documents Library advances health worldwide by serving as a freely accessible global information resource of documents that shed light on industry practices impacting public health.
