RG 32. Photographs

Scope and Contents This category of photographic materials comprises transparent positives. They are arranged in four series: Series 1. Lantern Slides; Series 2. Mounted Film Transparencies; Series 3. Unmounted Film Transparencies; and Series 4. Slide Sets. This collection was created for those transparencies that are not part of an institutional record group or a personal paper group. The mounted transparencies, also known as slides, were used with a projector for teaching and presentations,...

Scope and Contents

The negatives are arranged into three subgroups: Glass plate negatives; photographic materials (including some glass plate) by College photographers Arthur Ludwig and Arthur Ewing Princehorn; and the general collection of film negatives. See the Processing and Preservation Note (in Administrative Information) for background on the categories of negatives and the general history of their production.

Scope and Contents Photographs: Oversize Prints is an artificial classification for prints larger than legal paper size (8.5 x 14”). These prints, if smaller than oversize, would have been relegated to the subject classifications used for smaller photographs such as portraits, buildings, and so on. A wide range of subject matter and types of images fall into this group. The physical sizes of the prints determined the way in which they were boxed. When this group of photographs was first organized...

Scope and Contents The Oberlin College yearbook, titled the Hi-O-Hi, is a rich source of photographic documentation from 1889 to 2006, after which it ceased publication. In the final years of the yearbook, publication was erratic. The Hi-O-Hi photograph collection covers the years 1960-61, 1972-77, and the 1980s through 1994. There is less photographic documentation of the College in general for the 1980s though the early 2000s, and this...

Scope and Contents Photographic images of buildings, monuments and places on campus, on paper of legal size and smaller, fill this category; it also includes born digital images.  Nearly all of the buildings represented are college buildings; the exceptions are a few early Oberlin churches. The monuments represented are college-owned, with some exceptions. Places constitute the Arboretum, a large natural area with a reservoir, and Tappan Square, now devoid of buildings but which once served as the site of...

Scope and Contents Cased images represent the first forms of photographs taken at Oberlin, with the earliest dating from soon after the invention of photography in 1839, and the majority from the 1850s. In the United States, daguerreotypes were the first common expressions of photography. Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes exist only as single unique images that are not generated from negatives.  These images typically appear in period cases, which protected the cover glass of daguerreotypes and...

Scope and Contents This grouping, arranged by subject, holds the largest numbers of photographic prints in the Oberlin College Archives. The bulk of them are 8” x 10” or smaller, and are stored vertically in file cabinet drawers. Older, more fragile prints are stored separately in records cartons and require more careful handling. The subject headings were locally derived and do not adhere to any controlled vocabulary. The older prints, dating from the 1850s to the later 1910s, were produced by...

Scope and Contents To establish and report on the service of Oberlin College men and women in World War I, the College published a special tribute in the 1920 issue of its yearbook, the Hi-O-Hi, featuring photographs of those who served. The College sent out a survey to former students with a request for photographs. About twenty-five percent of those who had served responded. Of special concern to the organizers of the tribute was the need in this institutional publication to recognize the thirty-two...

Scope and Contents This classification is distinct from RG 32/5, photographs arranged by subject, and it is unclear as to why earlier Archives staff made that decision. Researchers will need to consult the inventories of both groups to discover photographs arranged by subject. In future, the Archives staff may reorganize the photographic prints to consolidate these two subject-driven groups. A significant amount of material relates to alumni groups and activities, student life, and the World War II V-12...

Scope and Contents This collection comprises Subgroup I, Flat Panorama Photographs and Subgroup II, Rolled Panorama and Other Rolled Photographs (cannot be flattened without conservation treatment). The panorama photographs were taken with special mechanized cameras such as the Cirkut, which made a wide sweep exposing a long roll of film to capture large groups or vistas. The time required to expose the broad sweep of film accounts for the appearance in some of these photographs of one individual at both...