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Thursday, December 21, 2023

Season's Greetings! 2023 in Review

As 2023 comes to a close, 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.

We’re grateful for your interest in industry documents and for your participation in the IDL community, whether that’s through documents research, workshops and trainings, project partnerships, or strategic planning and guidance.

Here are some of the achievements you helped us reach in 2023:

18,387,011 documents now available through IDL!

  • In collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, we continued to acquire and make available millions of documents created by Insys Therapeutics disclosed in opioid litigation as well as a new collection of DEA materials for the UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive. This brings the total number of OIDA documents to 3.1M.

  • The UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive team was honored to be the 2023 recipient of the Archival Innovator Award given by the Society of American Archivists. The Archival Innovator Award recognizes an archivist, a group of archivists, a repository, or an organization that demonstrates the greatest overall current impact on the profession or their communities.

  • With the support of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PHRE), IDL added the new Talc Litigation Collection to the Chemical Industry Documents Archive. This initial set of 3,500 documents was obtained through investigations and lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson, which alleged that the company knew its talc products contained asbestos, a known toxin linked to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.

  • At the closing of the MN Tobacco Depository in 2021, we identified a number of tobacco industry files and videos that were missing from our holdings. The Minnesota Historical Society conducted a search and a major digitization project on our behalf and we are so grateful for their efforts! This year we began adding these missing files to TTID and will continue to do so through 2024.

  • We welcomed J.A. Nelson to the IDL Team this year. J.A. is our Sr Front-end Web Developer helping to build an updated version of the IDL website. More details about this rebuild will be coming in 2024!

  • This summer, we hosted one Senior Data Science Fellow, Noel Salmeron, and two Junior Data Science Fellows, Adam Silva and Bryce Quintos, in collaboration with the UCSF Data Science and Open Scholarship team. As senior fellow, Noel utilized our audiovisual materials on IDL to evaluate the transcription accuracy of digital archives and the impact on documentation along with the creation of subject words and descriptions. Read more about this project on the Archives & Special Collections Brought to Light blog.

  • UCSF Magazine wrote a wonderful piece, Corporate Strategy, National Tragedy: UCSF’s industry archives expose the marketing tactics that fueled the opioid epidemic, featuring Professor Dorie Apollonio and her work with UCSF pharmacy students using the opioid industry documents.

  • We added 18 new publications which cite industry documents to our Bibliography, bringing the total number of citations to 1,174!
2023 was a busy year for workshops and webinars!
  • In May, we delivered our Annual Tobacco and Industry Documents Workshop.
  • Also in May, we had the pleasure of participating in the joint UCSF-JHU OIDA webinar "Exploring the Opioid Industry Documents: Research Communities, Educational Opportunities, and Community Data" (recording available)
  • In August, we assisted with a workshop on Breast Cancer and Industry Documents where advocates learned about a 1-year research project uncovering what industry knew about breast cancer risk and their products as well as new methodologies for research, advocacy and journalism collaborations.

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, Sven, Melissa and J.A.
Thursday, November 30, 2023

New Talc Litigation Collection Added to CIDA

Collections Updates


Chemical Industry Documents Archive

We are pleased to announce the addition of the Talc Litigation Collection, a new Chemical Industry Documents Archive collection.

This initial set of 3,500 documents was obtained through investigations and lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson, which alleged that the company knew its talc products contained asbestos, a known toxin linked to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.

Please check out the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment's blog post announcing this new collection. We are thankful for PRHE's continued support of the IDL and the crucial work they do disseminating research on industry strategies that harm public health.


UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive
Insys Therapeutics
The UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA) added 3,600 documents to the Insys Litigation Documents collection. This set contains emails, reports and documents from 2014 discussing the many aspects of Insys's business activities, ranging from insurance pre-authorization to speakers bureau training.

The Insys collection ultimately will contain several million documents that are currently being processed chronologically. Processed documents are being made public on a rolling basis.


Bibliography Updates

Alfred-John (A.J.) Roderos, Anthony Wong, James Chhen, Clever Chiu, Dorie E. Apollonio. Retail Chain Pharmacy Opioid Dispensing Practices from 1997 to 2020: A Content Analysis of Internal Industry Documents. Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports, 2023.


Friday, October 27, 2023

October 2023 Updates - Opioid and Tobacco Industry Documents


Collection Updates:

Opioid Industry Documents Archive
Insys Therapeutics Collection -
We added 3,600 documents to the Insys Litigation Documents collection. This set contains emails, reports and documents from 2014 discussing the many aspects of Insys's business activities, ranging from insurance pre-authorization to speakers bureau training.

The Insys collection ultimately will contain several million documents that are currently being processed chronologically.

Truth Tobacco Industry Documents

Since the closing of the Minnesota Tobacco Documents Depository in 2021, we have been collaborating with the Minnesota Historical Society to finish a comprehensive reconciliation of the Depository's holdings. With the Historical Society's assistance on site, we have been able to locate many files missing from our Tobacco MSA Collections and will be uploading documents, audio/visual materials, and other resources as we process them.

This month, we were able to complete 61 tobacco document records that had been missing videos, PDFs, and computer files for many years. Some of these documents represent batches of computer-based files or training modules that for the first time are available as downloadable ZIP files.

In addition, 32 new DATTA (Depositions and Trial Transcripts) documents were added today.

Bibliography Updates:


See all Papers and Publications written using Industry Documents



Evaluating Automated Transcription Accuracy: A Data Science Fellowship Report
It was a pleasure to work with Noel Salmeron this summer! As our 2023 Senior Data Science Fellow for the Industry Documents Library and Data Science Initiative, Noel utilized our audiovisual materials on IDL to evaluate the transcription accuracy of digital archives and the impact on documentation and the creation of subject words and descriptions for such archives.

Read Noel's Guest Post on the UCSF Archives Blog to learn more about this project.

Thursday, September 28, 2023

September 2023 Updates


Collection Updates:

Opioid Industry Documents Archive
Insys Therapeutics Collection -
We added more than 13,600 documents to the Insys Litigation Documents collection. This set contains emails, reports and documents from 2014 discussing the many aspects of Insys's business activities, ranging from insurance pre-authorization to speakers bureau training.

The Insys collection ultimately will contain several million documents that are currently being processed chronologically. Processed documents are being made public on a rolling basis with monthly releases expected in 2023–2024.

Bibliography Updates:


See all Papers and Publications written using Industry Documents
Thursday, July 27, 2023

July 2023 Updates – New Opioid Industry Documents!


Collection Updates:

Opioid Industry Documents Archive
Insys Therapeutics Collection -
We added more than 5,000 documents to the Insys Litigation Documents collection. This set contains emails, reports and documents from 2014 discussing the many aspects of Insys's business activities, ranging from sales to speakers bureau training.

The Insys collection ultimately will contain several million documents that are currently being processed chronologically. Processed documents are being made public on a rolling basis with monthly releases expected in 2023–2024.

New Documents Workshop!
What's Hiding in the UCSF Industry Documents Library about Breast Cancer?
August 23, 2023
11:30 - 1:30pm PST
Register at: https://bit.ly/475Istd



Bibliography Updates:

  • Cummings KM; Roberson A; Carroll DM; Stepanov I; Hatsukami D; Rees VW; O'Connor RJ. Illusion of filtration: Evidence from tobacco industry documents. Tobacco Induced Diseases, 2023 June 23.
  • Gac B; Yakubi H; Apollonio D. Issues arising from the study design, conduct, and promotion of clinical trials funded by opioid manufacturers: a review of internal pharmaceutical industry documents. Evidence & Policy, 2023 June 22.
  • Hedgpeth, J. The Bankruptcy of Purdue Pharma in the Wake of Big Tobacco. University of Colorado Law Review Forum 94 (1). 2023 April.
  • Šimsa Š.; Šulc M.; Skalický M.; Patel Y.; Hamdi A. DocILE 2023 Teaser: Document Information Localization and Extraction. In: Kamps, J., et al. Advances in Information Retrieval. ECIR 2023. Advances in Information Retrieval, 2023.

See all Papers and Publications written using Industry Documents
Friday, July 21, 2023

Opioid Industry Documents Archive Receives Archival Innovator Award from the Society of American Archivists

The UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA) is the 2023 recipient of the Archival Innovator Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The Archival Innovator Award recognizes an archivist, a group of archivists, a repository, or an organization that demonstrates the greatest overall current impact on the profession or their communities.

The SAA Awards Committee commended the repository’s team for “developing exceptional tools and practices that will have long-term benefits to the archival profession.” They highlighted OIDA’s work to develop privacy and redaction protocols to safeguard legally protected personal and health information in more than 3.1 million documents, serving as a model for other public health archives.

The Awards Committee also noted that OIDA’s collaboration across institutions, alongside its wide engagement outside of academia, informs the sustainability of the archive and its user experience. The OIDA project team and their national advisory committee represent a range of professions, including archivists, activists, attorneys, writers, educators, medical professionals, historians, computer scientists, and anthropologists.

The OIDA team has actively promoted the archives to journalists, policymakers, community members, and other stakeholders, and it has supported presentations, guest lectures, training sessions, labs, practicum experience, and independent research projects for more than 1,700 students, faculty, and researchers since its launch in March 2021.

"The OIDA team thanks all those who have worked so hard to support document disclosure in opioid litigation, including individuals and families impacted by the opioid crisis, community organizations, public health professionals, attorneys and legal staff, historians, and many other advocates," Kate Tasker, UCSF Industry Documents Library managing archivist, said. "We are proud for our work on OIDA to be recognized by fellow archivists who know the value of archives as sources for truth. OIDA builds on the strong foundation of the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library, and we look forward to continuing to innovate as we work to make these critically important documents accessible to the public."

SAA’s Archival Innovator Award was established in 2012. Previous recipients include Laura Gottlieb and Robbie Terman of the Center for Michigan Jewish History and the Community-Driven Archives at Arizona State University Library.

Founded in 1936, the Society of American Archivists is North America’s oldest and largest national archives professional association. SAA’s mission is to serve the educational and informational needs of more than 5,800 individual and institutional members and to provide leadership to ensure the identification, preservation, and use of records of historical value. For more information, visit www.archivists.org.

Monday, July 03, 2023

June 2023 Updates - New Opioid Industry Documents!

Collection Updates:

Opioid Industry Documents
The UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA) added more than 11,500 documents to the Insys Litigation Documents collection. This set contains emails, reports and documents from 2013 & 2014 discussing the many aspects of Insys's business activities, ranging from sales to speakers bureau training. The Insys collection ultimately will contain several million documents that are currently being processed chronologically. Processed documents are being made public on a rolling basis with monthly releases expected in 2023–2024.

New Collection - West Virginia DEA Investigation Collection
The 418 records in this new collection were obtained as a result of the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office multi-year investigation into the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s process of setting aggregate production quotas (APQs) for controlled substances.

The West Virginia Attorney General alleged that the DEA’s quota setting process was flawed and resulted in an overproduction of opioids which contributed to the drug crisis in West Virginia and elsewhere. The AGO submitted multiple FOIA requests to the DEA and received several batches of responsive documents.

35 additional transcripts of video declarations have been added to the SF Walgreen Litigation Collection.



Bibliography updates:

Five new papers and publications were added to the IDL Bibliography this month including:
Gaber, Nadia; Bero, Lisa; Woodruff, Tracey J. The Devil they Knew: Chemical Documents Analysis of Industry Influence on PFAS Science. Annals of Global Health 2023 June 01.

Robert Fife, Steven Chase & Bill Curry. McKinsey pitched Purdue Pharma Canada on plan to boost opioid sales in 2014, memo reveals. The Globe and Mail, 2023 June 19.