Digitizing and Providing Access to Historical AIDS Records

FAIN: PW-253755-17

University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco, CA 94143-2203)
Polina E. Ilieva (Project Director: July 2016 to March 2021)

The University of California, San Francisco, Library, collaborating with San Francisco Public Library and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society, will digitize 150,000 pages from 49 archival collections related to the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Bay Area and make them widely accessible to the public on the Internet. These collections document the activities, in the mid-1980s, of hospitals, health-care providers, activists, and organizations whose response to AIDS helped establish the San Francisco model of compassionate AIDS care as the worldwide standard. The diverse materials in these collections were created during an important period in recent history that reached deeply into the life of the community. The digitized collections will be a valuable resource for the study of humanities-related issues in disciplines such as history, literature, medicine, jurisprudence, journalism, and sociology by scholars, students, and the public.