University of California, San Francisco, receives $15 million gift from the American Legacy Foundation

Citation

Fitzsimons, E. (2001), "University of California, San Francisco, receives $15 million gift from the American Legacy Foundation", The Bottom Line, Vol. 14 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2001.17014bab.002

University of California, San Francisco, receives $15 million gift from the American Legacy Foundation

University of California, San Francisco, receives $15 million gift from the American Legacy Foundation

Keywords: Academic libraries, Library services, Legal matters

Dateline: San Francisco, California

Although intellectual freedom and budgets are always linked, in some cases, the cost of access to information is more pointed. For example, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) will be able to establish permanent Internet access to documents from the tobacco industry that were once secret, thanks to a gift of $15 million from the American Legacy Foundation (Legacy). The university announced on January 31, 2001, that it would establish two new programs with the award: American Legacy Foundation National Tobacco Documents Library and the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

UCSF has been a national leader in research into tobacco industry practices and the health effects of tobacco. In 1995, the University of California, on behalf of the UCSF Library, successfully defended a lawsuit brought by Brown and Williamson Tobacco Co. that sought to remove industry documents from the library. After the university prevailed in the California Supreme Court, the library made 10,000 pages of material available with the first Internet posting of such material. The library's current Tobacco Control Archives can be found at www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco

UCSF's new online documents library is considered critical to continued research in this field, since under the terms of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between the industry and 46 state attorneys general, the tobacco industry can remove existing documents from the Internet in 2010. Furthermore, Web sites that the tobacco industry maintains are notoriously difficult to use.

The American Legacy Foundation is a national, independent Washington DC-based foundation created in March 1999 as a result of the November, 1998, Master Settlement Agreement. Legacy has established goals to reduce youth tobacco use, decrease exposure to second-hand smoke, increase successful quit rates, and reduce disparities in access to prevention and cessation services and in exposure to second-hand smoke. The $15 million award to UCSF is the largest the organization has made since its inception. Legacy's aim is to "open the door to anyone interested in exploring and exposing decades of industry tactics. Early research in this important area, led by UCSF, has already revealed so much about how the tobacco industry operates behind the scenes, and this knowledge has forever changed public perception of tobacco products and the tobacco industry", according to Cheryl G. Healton, Legacy president and CEO. UCSF's Internet library will ensure that these documents are available to scholars, health advocates, journalists, and the public. Most of the documents in the collection were obtained through litigation led by state attorneys general.

Originally posted at libdev@listserv.arizona.edu