The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) contains more than 14 million previously-secret documents (80+ million pages) created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities.  This free and publically accessible site contains:

• Documents from major U.S. tobacco companies and their public relations organizations (Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Lorillard, the Tobacco Institute…)
• Documents from international tobacco companies such as British American Tobacco (BAT) and Gallaher
• Complete transcripts and depositions from US tobacco litigation as well as Canadian tobacco trials
• Thousands of videos and advertising images in our Multimedia and Pollay Collections
(See http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/about/about_collections.jsp for a complete list)

Each document has a detailed index record and is full-text searchable. 

The documents in LTDL range in date from the late 19th century up through the present, with the bulk of the collections dated 1950 through 2003.  Similar to any large corporation’s archives, the tobacco company collections include emails, memos, letters, scientific reports, meeting minutes and administrative documents.  LTDL has been used extensively by researchers and journalists to investigate the activities of the tobacco industry; to date over 800 papers, reports, book chapters and articles have been written using tobacco documents a primary source.  See http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docsbiblio for a full listing of all publications.

Links to APIs and documentation:  The Library makes available the metadata records for every document through an XML API.  Please contact the Library for more information and instructions.