This project, which is expected to be completed in 2012, is an undertaking by the Center for the History of Medicine to create an original, open access digital collection of archival, primary, and interpretive materials related to the history of the 1918 influenza pandemic in the United States. This virtual collection will include approximately 50,000 pages of original materials that document the experiences of diverse communities in the United States in fall 1918 and winter 1919 when influenza took the lives of approximately 675,000 Americans.
This virtual collection is aimed at a wide-ranging audience that encompasses high school and college students, historians and social scientists, epidemiologists and public health practitioners, journalists and writers, and informed internet users.
The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918: A Digital Encyclopedia is funded by the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta; the National Endowment for the Humanities, which has given the project a prestigious We the People designation for its efforts to strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture; and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation®, Princeton, New Jersey.