Emory Libraries celebrated the launch of the Global Health Chronicles (GHC), a collaborative online project chronicling the eradication of smallpox, yesterday on the 30th anniversary of the last smallpox case ever identified.

GHC is a public archival website that uses video and audio oral histories, written materials, photographs and seminars to document the work of public health professionals to eradicate smallpox, an achievement that was officially recognized on Oct. 26, 1979.

University President James W. Wagner called the GHC “digital scholarship and preservation,” and praised the collaborative efforts of the project and its future use as a resource for scholars.

“This smallpox story is the first installment in the format of an archive that is not going to be one those archives that collects dust; it’s not going to be one of those archives that you approach with white cotton gloves,” Wagner said.

GHC will be used for education and research and will house additional documents that chronicle other global health initiatives. The GHC website also includes two forthcoming archives of the eradication of the Guinea worm and malaria.

Jeffrey P. Koplan, director of GHI and one of three former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the event, also spoke of the project’s potential influence in future research.

“Future scholars will see this and see a treasure trove that is beyond our sense of how it might be used in the future,” Koplan said.

William H. Foege, former director of the CDC and former director of the Carter Center, hailed the GHC as a “gold standard” for other universities to follow.

“It’s a great honor to be a key partner in the preservation and documenting the intense planning and work that resulted in the worldwide eradication of smallpox,” Vice Provost and Director of Libraries Richard E. Luce said. “In doing so, we honor Emory’s commitment and our personal commitment in the libraries to create, teach, preserve and apply knowledge in the service of humanity.”

Emory Libraries, Emory Global Health Institute, Emory’s school of public health and the CDC contributed to GHC project.

James Curran, dean of the public health school, compared the efforts of the GHC project with the efforts of the eradication of smallpox.

“Like smallpox eradication, this kind of effort is about people. It’s about someone who has a good idea … and then it just happens because the driving force of a good idea is people,” Curran said. “For smallpox eradication, there were people who said, ‘We can do this.’ It’s a tribute to them and a tribute to the people that made this happen.”

— Contact Shin-he Yu.