UCSF’s Legacy Tobacco Documents Library to Receive $6.25M for Document Indexing and Access

From the UCSF Web Site:

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a proposed consent order today with a federal district court that finalizes requirements for three major tobacco companies to make internal documents public in accordance with an earlier ruling that the companies violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The documents will be archived in UCSF’s Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL).
The order, once approved by the court, will be part of the remedy phase of the largest civil racketeering case in the history of the United States.
The order specifies that the companies provide $6.25 million to the court to improve free public access to the documents via the Internet. The court will provide this money to the UCSF (U. of California-San Francisco) Legacy Library for this purpose. The order also specifies how the companies are to index the documents.
The UCSF Legacy Library, first launched in 2000 with a major gift from the Washington, D.C.-based American Legacy Foundation, now has 13.7 million documents (79 million pages) released as a result of litigation against the major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, political, public relations and scientific activities.
Each month, the Legacy Library is used by an average of 16,000 academic researchers, tobacco control advocates, lawyers, journalists and students internationally who view an average of 227,000 pages. Last year, visitors came from 190 different countries to use it. Close to 600 peer-reviewed journal articles and 130 other publications, including government reports, books and newspaper articles based on research at the library have been published. The new funds will allow all of that information to be digitized for early access online.

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