The AIDS Social History Programme collection has now been catalogued and can be accessed via the LSHTM archive catalogue. This is the second of the six collections to be made available as part of the Wellcome Trust funded ‘Cataloguing and Preservation of the HIV/AIDS Collections at LSHTM’ project.
Unlike the other collections, the AIDS Social History Programme collection was created as a documentary archive for the project that ran at the School from 1988 to 1994. The project was run by Professor Virginia Berridge and Dr Philip Strong and financed by the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, its chief purpose was to research and write the social history of AIDS in the UK as it happened, concentrating on policy making and the voluntary and medical sectors. The programme published two publications in this period including the seminal ‘AIDS in the UK: The making of policy, 1981-1994’ by Virginia Berridge, Oxford University Press, 1996.
AIDS in the UK: Virginia Berridge (1996)
The structure of the archives has been largely retained within its original order that was composed by the programme’s archivist, Janet Foster. Some of the original archives were not retained but the papers include large sections on the UK Voluntary sectors, Medical Research Council, UK Department of Health and Higher Education Authority (HEA) and papers ordered by subject such as ‘Drugs’ and ‘UK blood transfusion services’.
A few examples of sexual health public education publications from the UK Higher Education Authority (HEA) (c.1988-1989)
The papers contain an exciting mixture of documentation including: AIDS awareness leaflets, adverts, booklets and annual reports from voluntary sector; Department of Health press releases, minutes and reports; medical and sociological reports on AIDS in the United Kingdom and Europe; United Kingdom parliamentary sessions on HIV/AIDS related questions and also illustrated AIDS Awareness information cards produced in the United States.
Illustrated AIDS Awareness Information Cards (1993)
