I love this question, but I only have a preliminary direct answer and then a tangential answer that might interest you. First, in my research I have never found an instance of a historian falling ill (myself or anyone else) from archival work related to disease and medicine. Perhaps it has happened, but I've yet to find it or experience it myself. Though I have admittedly have gotten sick on trips to do research, but never from the archive material itself.
However! What you might find interesting---and is related to this question---is what the curator of the Trondheim police museum found around 1998. Tucked away for the past eighty years, had been "a glass bottle containing two irregularly shaped sugar lumps." But what alarmed the curator was the attached note: "A piece of sugar containing anthrax bacilli, found in the luggage of Baron Otto Karl von Rosen, when he was apprehended in Karasjok in January 1917, suspected of espionage and sabotage."
What you may not know is that Bacillus anthracis is of a genus of bacteria that form hardened, long-lived endospores. These structures help them survive conditions that are unfavorable to their growth, like dry seasons for soil bacteria---or in the case of anthracis---periods in between infection of various organisms. It is not known precisely how long endospores can last, but it is believed that under favorable conditions they can remain viable indefinitely. Thus the Trondheim museum curator was smart to contact the Norwegian Defence Microbiological Institute after his discovery. They found embedded in one of the sugar cubes a 20mm closed capillary tube, and the tube contained a brown fluid. After securing the bottle in a sterile environment, they proceeded to see if the fuild contained viable spores. From the tube they managed to grow only four colonies of bacteria (this is a very small number, suggesting the spores were at the end of their lifespan from the conditions they were recovered). What more, the biologists identified the bacteria as B. anthracis through culturing and staining, and on further used molecular techniques to support their identification.
What I really like about this story is that I think it's an interesting cross-roads for thinking about how historians can read from the natural histories of (micro)organisms something about the course of human history or science. B. anthracis was likely first isolated by the German physician Robert Koch in the 1870s. From the very dawn of bacteriology, its practitioners have been avid collectors and cultivators of bacterial cultures---both benign and deadly. It wasn't until the dawn of the 20th century that institutions arose with various nations with the goals of collecting and standardizing "type-cultures." This---in conjunction with the clinical processes of bacteriology---became the foundation on which we built our modern taxonomy of microbes and is closely related to how our culture deals and thinks about disease and pathogens both then and now. But microbes are strange creatures, and I think that they in turn have been active "meaning" makers, and thus can in ways be read as texts themselves.
But in this case, no one got ill from the B. anthracis isolated from the sugar cubes. But we do know that the German state entertained a few very small bioweapon attempts at the Allied cavalry (not entirely unlike British large scale planned bioweapon attacks on German cattle and cattle workers). I am doubtful, though, that historians have much to fear from most primary sources---no matter what the pestilent provenance. The vast majority of human pathogens do not survive long outside the body, B. anthracis being one of those rare few. But even B. anthracis, while it can be weaponized (aerosolized), is not a communicable disease, so we still have little to worry about.
Death in a Small Package: A Short History of Anthrax by Susan D. Jones is a really good book about the natural and human history of Anthrax---the diseases and the microbe.
Hi! I'm a reference archivist, with training in the preservation of documents. We get this question, sometimes, and the answer is fairly complicated. It really depends on the pathogen. The most common pathogen in an archive is mold, which could infect and live on old paper, and cause damage to it -- as well as, potentially, make someone sick. A lot of resources on mold can be found here at the National Archives' website.
Basically, and using this as my source, pathogens are likely to be inert -- including mold. Archives have to keep conditions cool and dry to preserve paper; the institution I work at typically has around 65 degrees Fahrenheit and around 40% relative humidity.
This isn't an ideal environment for mold and many pathogens in the stacks; the mold spores that could be hiding on a document are inert and not infecting other documents or us. That said, if conditions change -- for example, a power outage, or an excessive amount of time in a less environmentally controlled reading room -- the mold (and likely other) spores can become active. We send these in for conservation treatment quickly and we monitor conditions with data loggers, which record enormous amounts of data to show the change in conditions.
So, it's certainly possible to get an infection. I know that when I was hired, I was warned that I could be exposed to (specifically) mold spores as a function of my duties. It isn't, however, terribly likely. Archives aren't the ideal breeding ground for widespread infections. When it happens on an extreme level, the public isn't likely to be involved -- the archival staff will be doing disaster management and taking those materials out of the stacks to quarantine them.
If you ever see a moldy document, though, please tell your archive's staff! That's a bad thing for the entire archival collection, and not just that document.
As other commentors noted, you may want to ask science subreddits, too; I can speak about the common infestations, but I certainly am not an epidemiologist!
Not quite a pathogen but definitely in the same vein. Much of Marie Curie's research into radioactivity and the subsequent discoveries of polonium and radium was into uncharted territory.
As a result, many of her research documents and journals are kept in lead lined containers to this day. Her office and lab are also remain "hot".
So, in a sense the Curie's contemporary and immediatly subsequent researchers were in danger of unacceptable/dangerous exposure to radiation should they carelessly (or ignorantly) handle Marie or Pierre Curie's primary documents regarding their research into radioactivity.
In fact, her death from aplastic anemia has been linked directly to her carrying polonium in test tubes in her pockets as well as her work with setting up x-rays to help doctors treat soldiers during World War I before the need for strict precautions was fully understood.
According to the Business Insider her documents will remain radioactive for 1500 more years!
Everyone else has talked about the anthrax etc, but you're not out of the woods yet, because germs are not the only thing that can get you sick at the archives! I can walk you through some of the safety precautions I take at work to protect my health. I'm essentially a processing archivist (it's not my title, but I process most of the year). In general though, any material we injest is going to sit in the backlog for too long (read: months if it's an important collection, years if it's not) before an archivist processes it for any sort of common pathogen to survive.
Dust, mold, bird droppings, insect droppings, and mouse poop are actually my major workplace health hazards. This is due to how things are stored before they come to the archives, there's no reason for it other than people are gross. I was exposed to mouse droppings this spring processing a collection that was kept in a garage, I actually didn't wear gloves (it's dangerous to wear gloves with fragile paper actually, but that's a story for a different party), but I washed my hands about every 20 minutes. In another collection, I experienced enough dust exposure to have some nasal irritation that lasted a while. This was from a collection that was taken from the house of a hoarder, who I believe also smoked (judging from his habit of using matches as bookmarks), from his basement which was not completely dry, so it was just full of irritants. I have access to face masks but they're a major PITA to wear, so I usually prefer to use a damp cloth to wipe materials (i.e. Book covers, boxes, media casings) periodically to keep the dust down, and take breaks. But I know some archivists who have developed severe sensitivies to mold spores and dust over time working with history, and had to switch jobs. It's just a risk you have to live with if you want the job I suppose.
To mitigate risks, additionally, high mold content material can be deep-freezed before it is processed, but this doesn't totally reduce your expose to mold (which is still irritating when it's dead), it's mostly to keep it from spreading to your collections. I have processed one collection (also from a hoarder, but a different one! Lotta hoarders in the ivory tower, but once again, story for another party) that had been deep freezed to kill mold before it was processed. I did not experience any noticeable symptoms from it though.
Also a/v material exposes you to eye/nasal irritants, in particular decomposing acetate "vinegar syndrome" film is quite irritating in long patches. This is pretty well known and something any competent manager or archivist will look out for. Ideally it should be handled under a fume hood, but if I ever work in an archives with a fume hood... I had a part-time student working with film for a little longer than I was comfortable with, and I had to keep reminding her to take breaks.
Anyway, don't be scared off from coming to visit, because patrons (aka historians) are going to be working with cleaned, processed collections, and you probably face more health risks from checking out a DVD from the public library.
Might want to go to /r/AskScience! They might know if it would be at least possible.
Common pathogen lifespan outside the host will make you feel better: http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/how-long-do-bacteria-and-viruses-live-outside-the-body.aspx
Pathogen spores will take that good feeling away: http://www.microbeworld.org/interesting-facts/microbial-record-holders/oldest-living-microbes
The answer could also be- how would you know where the illness came from? These days we're good at tracking some illnesses, but it's often still guesswork as to which germ-covered surface actually gave you the sniffles. Most pathogens aren't dramatic enough to be the star of a movie, especially with modern drugs; what killed folks pre-sanitization and pre-cough medicine is just a minor inconvienence today.
There's an incident involving a smallpox scab related in "Demon in the Freezer" by Richard Preston. Preston is a bit of an alarmist and far from a historical source so you should take anything he says with a grain of salt. I don't have the material in front of me or I'd run it down for you. Long story short, the incident passed without infection which is about the only outcome I'd trust Preston to report accurately.