Thursday, December 16, 2021

Season’s Greetings from the UCSF Industry Documents Library

At the end of another challenging year, we’d like to say a big THANK YOU to all of our researchers for your continuing support and connection to the Industry Documents Library.

Here are some of the achievements we reached in 2021:
15,194,052 documents now available through IDL!

• We added 57,427 new documents to the collections in 2021 (38,927 tobacco, 11,523 drug, and 6,977 food)
• In collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, we officially launched the new Opioid Industry Documents Archive and began rapid work on collection development (more news coming soon!)
• We worked with the Minnesota Historical Society to ensure that all documents in the tobacco companies' Minnesota Tobacco Document Depository and document websites are preserved, after the Depository closed to the public at the end of August 2021
• We developed a set of Technical Recommendations for Preserving Industry Documents Disclosed in Litigation and made these publicly available for use by other librarians, archivists, and legal professionals engaged in document disclosure work
• We processed and made public the British American Tobacco Africa Collection, an essential set of documents for investigating tobacco industry bribery and corruption in Africa
• We delivered an eight-week Food Industry Documents Archive Training Institute to help global health advocates learn how to search and use industry documents in their work
• We hosted three incredible summer interns who worked remotely on metadata enhancement projects and helped us advance our work with natural language processing (NLP)
• We added 12 new publications which cite industry documents to our Bibliography

From all of us at the IDL, we wish you a safe and festive holiday season, and a healthy and hopeful New Year ahead.
Kate, Rachel, Rebecca and Sven

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

UCSF and Johns Hopkins University Launch Opioid Industry Documents Archive

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Johns Hopkins University announced the launch of the Opioid Industry Documents Archive, a digital repository of publicly disclosed documents from recent judgments, settlements, and ongoing lawsuits concerning the opioid crisis. The documents come from government litigation against pharmaceutical companies, including opioid manufacturers and distributors related to their contributions to the deadly epidemic, as well as litigation taking place in federal court on behalf of thousands of cities and counties in the United States. The documents in the archive include emails, memos, presentations, sales reports, budgets, audit reports, Drug Enforcement Administration briefings, meeting agendas and minutes, expert witness reports, and depositions of drug company executives.  

The Opioid Industry Documents Archive leverages extraordinary expertise within UCSF and Johns Hopkins University in library science, information technology, and digital archiving. It also relies on scholarship focused on many dimensions of the opioid epidemic, ranging from the history of medicine to pharmaceutical policy to clinical care. Key organizations at UCSF involved include the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies; Department of Clinical Pharmacy; Department of Humanities and Social Sciences; Department of Family and Community Medicine; and Library. From Johns Hopkins University, the project involves the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness; Welch Medical Library; Institute of the History of Medicine; and Sheridan Libraries’ Digital Research and Curation Center.  

The new archive will provide free public access to anyone who is interested in investigating the activities that have led to the devastating epidemic, which has now contributed to the deaths of nearly 500,000 people. The archive will promptly include new documents as they become available through resolution of legal action against companies that contributed to the deadly opioid crisis. The launch coincides with the universities’ efforts to house more than 250,000 documents produced by opioid manufacturer Insys in the course of its bankruptcy proceedings following opioid litigation.  

The archive is similar to the groundbreaking Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive at UCSF, which has fostered scientific and public health discoveries shaping tobacco policy in the U.S. and around the world. This new archive from two top research universities will deliver a wealth of information that experts can analyze to help policymakers prevent another disaster like this from happening again.

To learn more, read the full press release or contact us.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Thousands of New Industry Documents Posted

Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Update:
12,993 new Tobacco Industry Documents added today! This includes:

• 9,108 RJ Reynolds records
• 3,830 Lorillard Records
• 55 new DATTA documents - Depositions and Trial Transcripts from recent Engle Progeny Tobacco Cases

Chemical Industry Documents Update:
1,936 documents added to the Sanjour Hazardous Waste Papers - This is the final batch of documents acquired from William Sanjour and the Bioscience Resource Project. These materials document Sanjour's career not only as a branch chief of the Hazardous Waste Management division at the EPA but ultimately, as a whistleblower on government corruption. See the William Sanjour Hazardous Waste Papers for more information.

Thursday, July 16, 2020

The Wm Sanjour Papers and More Tobacco Documents Added!

Tobacco Documents Update:
4811 new tobacco industry documents were posted -

• 387 Lorillard Records
• 29 Philip Morris Records
• 4286 RJ Reynolds Records
• 109 DATTA transcripts - Depositions and Trial Testimony from recent Engle Progeny Tobacco Cases

Chemical Industry Documents Update:

• 165 Roundup Litigation Documents posted - these are exhibits from the DeWayne Johnson v Monsanto case in California.

William Sanjour Hazardous Waste Papers
We are very excited to announce the addition of this collection to our Chemical Industry Documents Archive. This first batch of documents will be joined by another 1700+ in the coming month so stay tuned!

In 1974, William Sanjour was appointed branch chief at the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) newly formed Hazardous Waste Management Division. In this position, he was to guide the agency in implementing its new responsibilities regulating industrial hazardous waste disposal. Increasingly concerned about industry interference and pressure on the EPA, Sanjour became a whistle-blower in 1978 in order to expose senior EPA officials' efforts to weaken environmental protection regulations. This collection contains a wealth of information on the inner workings of the Agency and the various EPA administrators, some of whom became consultants to waste management companies including Douglas Costle, Walter Barber, Lee Thomas and Rita Lavelle.

In the introduction to his 2013 memoir, Sanjour writes, "I confess I have a terrible memory and at eighty years of age it’s not getting any better. Because of my bad memory I’ve always saved documents, newspapers, and anything I thought might come in handy. However on becoming a whistle-blower this became doubly important as the government was constantly trying to invent ways to fire me. I have a filing cabinet next to me with four drawers of documents covering my thirty years at EPA as well as several boxes of documents. This collection has served me well over the years. It has provided source material and supporting material for many things I have written and said." In 2018, the 'drawers full of documents' were donated by Mr. Sanjour and digitized by the Bioscience Resource Project. In total, this collection contains 2500+ documents that shine a light on political and industry pressures on EPA regulators, as well as the pressures brought to bear on whistle-blowers in an attempt to silence them.

Thursday, June 18, 2020

23,000+ New Tobacco Industry Documents and New Chemical Industry Collection

Tobacco Industry Documents Update:
23,548 documents added to the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents:

• 23,523 new RJ Reynolds Records
• 6 new Lorillard Records
• 18 new Philip Morris Records
• 1 new PMI document donated by OCCRP from their investigation into PMI marketing of IQOS - https://www.occrp.org/en/loosetobacco/blowing-unsmoke/

Chemical Industry Documents Updates:
Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates Collection:
200+ documents concerning the Bayview Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site remediation and cleanup acquired by the Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates in collaboration with the Democratic Socialists of America through public records requests, FOIA requests, and litigation sources. Funding to support processing and preservation of this collection has been provided by the UCSF Environmental Health Initiative and the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center's Office of Community Engagement.

Of note are years of Restoration Advisory Board Meeting packets and 2 Petitions to the Court, with Exhibits, to revoke Tetra Tech EC, Inc.'s Radiological Materials License due to fraud, data manipulation and falsification.

Friday, December 20, 2019

Season’s Greetings from the UCSF Industry Documents Library!

The UCSF Industry Documents Library staff would like to thank all of you for your continued support and rigorous research into the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, Drug Industry Documents, Chemical Industry Documents, Food Industry Documents, and new Fossil Fuel Industry Documents collections. Your scholarship has influenced public health policy around the world and produced over 1060 papers and publications using the documents.

Highlights of 2019 –
14,997,111 documents now up on IDL!

• Over 52,900 tobacco documents were added to the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents
• We added our first collection on JUUL Labs
• We established an Opioid Litigation documents collection in the Drug Industry Documents Archive with more planned for 2020
• More than 100 new documents were added to the Chemical Industry Documents Archive, including a new collection on PFAS chemicals which were featured in the 2018 documentary The Devil We Know (and are also the subject of the new Mark Ruffalo film Dark Waters)
• Our Food Industry Documents Archive more than doubled in size, with over 74,000 new documents added this year. New collections include papers of nutritionists Fredrick J. Stare, Charles Glen King, and Nevin Scrimshaw, as well as subject files from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and records of the BC Sugar Refining Company
• We built a new Fossil Fuel Industry Documents Archive to house over 1,100 documents from the Climate Investigations Center’s Climate Files project, which detail the fossil fuel industry's research and reaction to anthropogenic climate change beginning in the 1950s to the present.

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Industry Documents Library to help us add new collections in 2020!

From all of us at the IDL, we wish you Happy Holidays and a Joyous New Year!
Kate, Rachel, Rebecca and Sven