Overview

The Industry Documents Library is a digital archive of documents created by industries which influence public health, hosted by the University of California, San Francisco Library. Originally established in 2002 to house the millions of documents publicly disclosed in litigation against the tobacco industry in the 1990s, beginning with the State of Minnesota, the Library has expanded to include documents from the drug, chemical, food, and fossil fuel industries to preserve open access to this information and to support research on the commercial determinants of public health.

Collection Development

To learn more about how we collect documents, please read our Collection Development Policy. 

If you are interested in contributing documents please contact Library staff.

Document Disclosure

For specifications on document disclosure in litigation, please see our report Technical Recommendations for Preserving Industry Documents Disclosed in Litigation (2021).

Impact

The documents have been cited in more than 1,000 publications, including articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, NPR, and the New York Times. The Library makes its collections available for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research under the Fair Use provision of U.S. Copyright Law. For more information about using and citing the documents, please review our Copyright and Fair Use guidelines.

Funding

The Truth Tobacco Industry Documents collection was developed with a 2001 gift from the American Legacy Foundation (now Truth Initiative). All other collections are supported through grants and donations. To learn more please visit the specific About page for Tobacco, Opioid, Chemical, Drug, Food, or Fossil Fuel collections.

Our Collections

Our Mission

The mission of the UCSF Industry Documents Library is to identify, collect, curate, preserve, and make freely accessible internal documents created by industries and their partners which have an impact on public health, for the benefit and use of policymakers, researchers, clinicians, educators, students, and the general public at UCSF and internationally.

Our Vision

The UCSF Industry Documents Library seeks to advance health worldwide by serving as a freely accessible global information resource providing permanent access to documents which shed light on industry practices which impact public health.