csts.ua.edu

A retrospective on the website for the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society

This page is a report on the history, evolution, progress, and plans for the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society’s website. It was created using the wayback machine a tool at archive.org that allows users to browse cached editions of websites from the past. It features commentary and analysis from the Center’s digital archivist and collection manager turned internet archeologist, Kevin Bailey.

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2013

The Earliest Iteration

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▲ Use the Controls Above to Navigate the Slide Gallery ▲

This is the earliest documented instance of csts.ua.edu on the Wayback Machine. It is a spartan and rudimentary website, more or less a web presence, with its only notable features being the sliding images that link to various articles and the proto-exhibits.

One other important note is a link to the CSTS Archive which was an installation of Archon, clicking on it will take you to the cached homepage for CSTS’s Archon but there is no content on that site. CSTS’s holdings on archon were hosted by University Libraries and were lost when the Archon was deleted during an update to UA libraries’ content management system.

These pages regrettably have little to no media content on them, due to the nature of the Wayback Machine’s capture methodology which doesn’t retain most secondary media elements and never any third-tier media elements. Most of the material is still hosted on csts.ua.edu and we can tell what was there due to the captions and broken filenames featured on the pages. The Wayback Machine only produces a cached version of the site compressed and stored on a server.

There are twelve collections on the site at this time and you can see the image file load failures beginning here. The twelve are:

Airlines and Smoking
Christmas and Tobacco
Medical Journal Editorship
Alabama State Headlines Collection

Greeting Cards
Minorities and Tobacco
Religion and Tobacco
Arts and Tobacco Sponsorship

Health Claims and Tobacco
Tobacco-Free Pharmacies
Children and Tobacco
Hospitals and Tobacco

The Center has made updated and expanded versions of all of these collections turning some into full exhibitions, the exceptions being Religion and Tobacco and Health Claims and Tobacco which are scheduled to be created soon.

This is an example of what you get clicking on one of the collections. A handful of broken image links and text explaining the collection and another broken link to a finding aid.

The Articles page has the next most content but none of the links work on the Wayback Machine’s cached copy. There’s also a specific section dedicated to DOC Doctors Ought to Care.

2014

Newsfeeds

By 2014 the website was utilizing a newsfeed style approach with posts rather than pages for the generation of content. Much of the content remains unchanged beyond the homepage and its posts, with most of the collections having be established though not populated or fleshed out.

2015

Podcasts

The Center had begun production of its oral histories called “Clearing the Air” and the posts had become links to the audio of those recording sessions. This would mark the last recorded year of the smoke gray gradient appearance of the Center’s website opting for the crimson and white motif that brought the website into the same styling format as the Universities other web properties.

2018

Modern Era

No archive records of the Center’s appearance between 2015 and 2018 have survived, there are indexed instances but none are accessible. This March 2018 edition marks the start of the modern era where the website utilized WordPress with an Enfold theme which would be the engine for much of the innovation and enhancement the website would undergo in the next several years.

As new exhibitions and collections were created and existing sections of the site were beginning to have content added to them the website’s homepage and the site in general needed a dramatic overhaul. The Center’s collections are replete with dynamic and evocative imagery and graphics, this content was too rich to not feature front and center and highlight.

From a design aspect, the new look is more engaging and inviting drawing users in and giving them an array of choices. New technical aspects add animation and transition to the page keeping it alive and presenting new content to users.

Exhibitions that were set into development that year include:

Big Tobacco in the Big Apple: How New York City Became the Heart of the Tobacco Industry …and Anti Smoking Activism

Minorities and Smoking: Of Mice and Menthol – The Targetting of African Americans by the Tobacco Industry

Cartoonists Take Up Smoking

Wedded to Smoking

Smoking in the Balcony Only: When Movie Stars Sold Cigarettes

The Makin’s of a Nation: Tobacco and World War I

Doctors Ought to Care: Forty Years of Advocacy 1977-2017

The Unfiltered Truth About Smoking And Health: The American Medical Association Rewrites Tobacco History

Stamping Out Smoking: Anti-Smoking Stamps From Around the World

Merry X-Ray And A Happy New Lung: When Santa Sold Cigarettes

Up In Smoke: “The Airline Flight Attendants’ Fight to End Smoking Aloft”

2019

Transition

The Center’s final year at Nott Hall saw a decline in the output of exhibitions and collections, while the center remained productive focus was on the impending move to new facilities across the University of Alabama campus to the Northeast Medical Building. Several sections were upgraded and enhanced with new exhibitions being added. The Center also filmed its first promotional video.

Sports + Tobacco = A Losing Team

Baseball & Tobacco

Touchdown Tobacco

Sports + Tobacco = A Losing Team marked the Center’s return to museum exhibitions when it was put on display at the Paul W. Bryant Museum in January 2020.
WVUA-23’s coverage of the exhibition’s premiere.

Now a Filter Made of Tobacco Itself: Brown & Williamson’s Kentucky Kings Cigarettes

Digital Media Addiction: A Modern Phenomenon Through the Lens of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society

Tanning Bedlam

Cigarette Ad Role Models: Stories of Tragedy and Regret

Confronting America’s Smoking Pandemic: A Timeline in Four Parts

Like Father, Like Son: Smoking as a Family Tradition

Silk Cut: Surrealism as Subversion

Museum Malignancy: Tobacco Industry Sponsorship of the Arts

Camel Artists Packs

2020

Pandemic

There wasn’t much change to the website from a format stand point in 2020, the major addition to the home page was the notice at the bottom of the page formally announcing CSTS’s move to the Northeast Medical Building. With most of the major exhibitions and collection pages complete, focus was shifted toward enhancing multimedia menu sections and updating information about the Center. This effort led to the creation of the Center’s 2020 promotional video.

Corrections

Internships at the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society

Lorillard’s KENT Micronite Filter

Advertising in the Journal of the American Medical Association

The Surgeon General Vs. The Marlboro Man:
Who Really Won?

“Safer” Cigarettes

Depictions of Smoking in Pharmaceutical Advertising

2021

Return

Despite the disruption of the move to the Northeast Medical Building and the ongoing struggle against the Coronavirus the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society remained productive taking on several interns in the spring of 2021 and producing more content utilizing new technologies for collaboration and communication.

Oral Histories

Smoke-Filled Room:
The American Medical Association Resident Physician Section’s support for anti-smoking only went so far…

Tobacco Heart: Cigarette Smoking and Cardiovascular Health

Medical Journal Editorship Collection Of Alan Blum, MD: The First Medical Journal Theme Issues On The World Tobacco Pandemic

C. Everett Koop, MD Surgeon General of The United States | 1982-1989

Going For (Old) Gold: Kent, Lorillard, and the 1960 Olympic Games

Stan Sawyer. Salem Cigarettes & “Space Hoppers”

Dr. John Cannell, Family Physician Who Refused to See New Patients Who Smoked

Several of the Center’s infographic posters produced by Dr. Blum, students from the University of Alabama, and other collaborators outside the university were recreated as interactive web posters and hosted on Center’s website.

The Detrimental Effects of Smoking On the Musculoskeletal System

Medical Marijuana: Myths and Realities

Cannabidiol (CBD): What Consumers Need To Know

The Filter Fraud: Debunking the Myth of “Safer” as a Key New Strategy of Tobacco Control

The Coronavirus pandemic introduced the world to Zoom and virtual meetings, CSTS took advantage of the technology to conduct interviews with interesting figures featured in the Center’s collections.