Subject: New Digital Archive of FDA Court Cases
From:    "Rees, John (NIH/NLM) [E]" <[log in to unmask]>
Date:    Wed, April 1, 2009 1:53 pm

Apologies for cross postings:
NLM History of Medicine Division Releases Digital Archive of FDA Court Cases

The Archives and Modern Manuscripts Program
< http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/collections/archives/ammp/index.html> at the
History of Medicine Division < http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/>, National
Library of Medicine is pleased to announce the release of a new digital
archive of court case summaries published as the Food and Drugs Act
Notices of Judgment.

http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/fdanj/

The collection is a digital archive of the notices judgment for products
seized under authority of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the 1938
Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The NJs are resources in themselves, but
also lead users to the over 2,000 linear foot collection of the evidence
files used to prosecute each case. These files include materials such as
correspondence, lab results, photographs, and product samples and
labeling. This collection offers insight into U.S. legal and governmental
history, as well as the evolution of clinical trial science and the social
impact of medicine on health. The legal history of some of our best-known
consumer items of today, such as Coca Cola, and companies like Merck
Pharmaceuticals, can be traced in the collection.

Users can perform full-text searching and browse the archive by Case
Title, Defendant Name, Adjudicating Court Name, Geographic Seizure
Location, and Case Publication Date.

To preserve these NJs and make them accessible, we have created a digital
archive of both page images and metadata for each NJ. The archive was
developed as a joint research project between HMD and the Lister Hill
Center's Communications Engineering Branch< http://archive.nlm.nih.gov>
(CEB). CEB's System for Preservation of Electronic Resources
< http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/sper.php> (SPER) is a set of Java-based
applications currently used in conjunction with the DSpace
< http://www.dspace.org/> platform. Among other archiving and preservation
functions, SPER performs automated metadata extraction (AME) from TIFF
page images, quality control review, and batch ingest of objects in an
integrated fashion. SPER leverages the powerful archiving infrastructure
and access mechanisms provided by DSpace for storage and dissemination,
but the operations are modularized so that they can be used as standalone
services or integrated with other repository or digital archive platforms
or web services.

The current content consists of over 6,800 cases (over 4,300 pages)
covering actions against Drugs and Devices from 1940-1963. As we complete
work on other portions of the collection they will be released on an
ongoing basis. Users are welcome to visit the library to use the hard
copies at any time.

Future releases:
* Foods and Drugs, 1908-1943 (31,000 cases/21,000 pages)
* Foods, 1940-1966 (30,000 cases/9,800 pages)
* Cosmetics, 1940-1964 (256 cases)

For more information, please contact John P. Rees, Curator, Archives and
Modern Manuscripts Program, at
[log in to unmask]< mailto:[log in to unmask]>



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