For many years, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) maintained a large library of books on drug use and policy at its New York City headquarters. As researchers shifted to working online, DPA’s Jules Netherland said she noticed fewer people coming into the office to use the collection.

“It became clear if we really wanted people to benefit from our resources that digitization was the way to go,” said Netherland, managing director of the Alliance’s Department of Research and Academic Engagement. It was also an opportunity to add to the growing collection of the Substance Abuse Librarians and Information Specialists (SALIS).

DPA donated its book collection to the Internet Archive to be digitized and made available for lending and for the print disabled. A team was sent to New York to pick up the books, which were packaged onto three pallets and shipped to a facility for scanning and storage.

Now, the digital version of the DPA library, with 2,260 items, is available to the public at https://archive.org/details/dpa. It is part of the larger SALIS collection of 8,647 items on alcohol and substance abuse digitized by SALIS.

Browse the new Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) collection: https://archive.org/details/dpa

The new donation covers books on a range of subjects going back to the 1900s, said Liz Rosenberg, donations manager for the Internet Archive. There are volumes on historical and cultural analysis of drug use, policy and politics around drugs, pharmacological studies, and books specific to a particular drug. Titles now digitized include: Deadly medicine: Indians and alcohol in early America; Between prohibition and legalization : the Dutch experiment in drug policy; Pain, analgesia, and addiction: the pharmacologic treatment of pain; and Meth wars : police, media, power.

The public has responded with curiosity. In January, 10,000 items were accessed in the digitized collection. Rosenberg speculates the audience is likely researchers, historians, healthcare providers, and policymakers.

In the rapidly evolving field of drug policy, which spans many disciplines, Netherland said it’s important to provide evidence-based information to the public. The hope is to enhance advocacy efforts with easier access to the organization’s collection. DPA developed a resource guide to encourage its use on the Internet Archive.

In donating its collection, DPA helped build the Internet Archive’s SALIS collection. Since 2008, SALIS has helped preserve thousands of items from physical libraries with research from drug and alcohol fields that have closed, said Andrea Mitchell, SALIS executive director. 

About 30 years ago, there were approximately 95 libraries, clearinghouses, and resource centers around the world devoted to collecting, cataloguing, and disseminating information concerning alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, Mitchell said. However, today the majority of those  libraries  or databases have closed. The U.S. government has also shut down collections, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse, whose library went back to 1935. “We’re losing important resources and knowledge,” Mitchell said.

This leaves a void in access that has been filled, in part, by digitized collections online. Mitchell said The SALIS Collection includes materials that go back to 1774 and books from medicine, sociology, psychology, economics, law and policy, criminal justice, and other fields. In addition to books, there are government documents, grey literature, and newsletters.  

The DPA collection was one of the larger libraries in the U.S., Mitchell said, and its donation to the Internet Archive is significant and welcome.

The Internet Archive is interested in receiving more curated collections like DPA’s on specific subject matters, Rosenberg added. “These really valuable books for research and resources are often not preserved when funding is lost at the library that houses them,” she saidTo find out more about the physical item donation process, go to the Help page for details.