Overview
The UCSF Industry Documents Library (IDL) is a digital archive providing free public access to millions of documents obtained from industries that are used for life-saving public health research. The UCSF IDL team redesigned and rebuilt the web application for the digital archive and won the Silver Design Award at the 2025 UC Tech Awards.
The Challenge
The UCSF IDL is a digital archive providing free public access to millions of documents obtained from industries that impact health. It was established at the UCSF Library in 2002 to house previously internal tobacco industry documents disclosed through lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers and has since supported over 1,000 evidence-based publications by scientists, lawyers, public health experts, journalists, policymakers, historians, and many others. These publications have significantly contributed to tobacco control policy and legislation (including the World Health Organization’s first global health treaty) and have had a life-saving impact in reducing tobacco-related deaths worldwide.
In 2021 IDL was selected as the repository for vast amounts of data being disclosed from public interest lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, which required an urgent new strategy for expanding IDL’s technical infrastructure and redesigning the website user interface (UI) to support the rapidly expanding archive of documents. Key goals included:
- Modernizing the UI
- Improving web accessibility
- Aligning with UCSF design and branding
- Building a mobile-friendly interface
- Improving search performance
- Implementing user-requested features, including those from key stakeholders in state attorneys general offices and at partner institutions
The IDL team was also committed to using open-source tools to encourage collaboration and to allow other libraries and archives to build similar platforms more easily and cheaply.
The project involved the massive undertaking of user experience (UX) and UI research, design, and implementation for a system containing 22 million documents that encompass diverse formats originating from varied sources including the tobacco, opioid, drug, chemical, food, and fossil fuel industries. Documents require metadata tagging, and there are challenges around making varied formats such as audio files, PowerPoint slides, and text documents all viewable in the same interface. It was also challenging to perfect indexing methods for these documents using free and open-source tools like Solr. The challenges of seemingly small tasks are greatly compounded by the sheer volume and diverse nature of the data.
The Approach
Led by Technical Lead Rebecca Tang, the IDL team developed a road map to completely re-evaluate, redesign, and rebuild the IDL web application. The process began with hiring a one-year contract UX designer in 2022. The team gathered information about past development and current user requirements, and coordinated with the UCSF web design team to develop an initial prototype based on UCSF branding and identity guidelines.
Following this alpha phase, the team hired a Front-End Developer (J.A. Nelson) and navigated a hand-off to a new UX designer (Anna Kahrs) while continuing to update the current infrastructure and maintain regular operations through monthly document ingests (managed by Sven Maier). IDL also hired a Program Coordinator (Melissa Ignacio) who developed and implemented project management practices to track complex deliverables, timelines, stakeholder feedback, and user engagement. Along with subject matter experts and archivists (Rachel Taketa and Emma James), the team collaboratively created user personas, evaluated design proposals based on criteria including accessibility, usability, and inclusivity, conducted dozens of user interviews and user testing sessions, and communicated regular updates to key stakeholders through reports and live demos.
The developer team (Rebecca Tang, Sven Maier, and J.A. Nelson) researched, selected, customized, and deployed Spring Boot and Payload Content Management System as core frameworks. The team kept extremely accurate documentation, which helped with additional UX design hand-offs in 2023 (to Gissoo Doroudian) and in 2024 (to Sumaiya Elahi).
The beta phase of the project was completed in January 2025, and the team is currently working through final content review, bug fixes, and other updates in preparation for a full public roll-out in mid-2025. The new IDL web application will significantly improve access to industry documents for all audiences and will support crucial public health investigations by researchers in the UCSF community, the U.S., and around the world.
The Impact
The IDL rebuild project has been a cross-functional team effort that has relied on the expertise of over a dozen programmers, designers, archivists, and project managers at UCSF (including the core IDL team nominated for this award). The new web application will support a robust user community that logged over 110,000 visits to IDL in calendar year 2024 (with over 8 million visits since 2002).
The project has also resulted in major improvements to IDL’s web accessibility, server management, cost efficiency, and security. The team plans to present its work at UC Tech and at other tech and library conferences to encourage further collaboration and adoption of this unique open-source approach to preserving and providing access to industry documents for the public good.
Meet the Award-Winning Team
Team Name: Industry Documents Library Team
Award Category: Design
Location: UCSF
2025 Silver Design Award Winners:
- Rebecca Tang – IDL Technical Lead, Industry Documents Library, UCSF Library
- Sven Maier – IDL Software Developer, Industry Documents Library, UCSF Library
- J.A. Nelson – IDL Front-End Developer, Industry Documents Library, UCSF Library
- Melissa Ignacio – IDL Program Coordinator, Industry Documents Library, UCSF Library
- Rachel Taketa – IDL Processing & Reference Archivist, Industry Documents Library, UCSF Library
- Emma James – IDL Project Archivist, Industry Documents Library, UCSF Library
- Anna Kahrs – Lead UX Designer, UCSF
- Gissoo Doroudian – Education UX Designer, UCSF
- Sumaiya Elahi – UX Designer, UCSF Library
Read More
Read the team’s complete UC Tech Awards application
Learn more about the UC Tech Awards Program
Contact
Director of the Industry Documents Library
UCSF Library
[Cover image and event photo of Melissa Ignacio and J.A. Nelson with UC CIOs Matthew Gunkel, Aisha Jackson and Molly Greek, courtesy of Andrew Castro]
