New Digital Collection Preserves Key Books on Drug Use and Policy

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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 photo restoration service 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.