RG 32. Photographs

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 the...

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 Class albums are photograph albums with portraits of the graduating members of a particular class year at Oberlin College, which sometimes include photographs of faculty members or the president of the College. The date range for these is 1858-1898, but some years are not represented. These albums replace the daguerreotype and ambroytpe group portraits of the preceding two decades as photographers adopted the methods of making multiple prints from wet or dry plate negatives.The...

Scope and Contents The photographs of graduates and former students are arranged in two series. A third series holds photographs of Oberlin community members associated in some way with the college.Loose photographs of graduates and former college students in Series 1, Subseries 1 are arranged chronologically by graduating class, beginning with 1836. Files include photographs taken while students attended Oberlin and after they left. Many of the latter were taken during class reunions. Some...

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

This photograph group includes five Oberlin College viewbooks dating from 1911 through 1922. In Series 1, this record group also includes College-published calendars, programs, and books ranging in date from about 1900 through 2015. In Series two, there are loose photogrpahs and books dating from 1888 through 1976.

Scope and Contents Like the record group for graduate and former students, this group holds portraits dating from the earliest years of photography to the present. However, the earliest images are print copies of daguerreoptypes and other cased images, the originals of which are held in a separate record group (RG 32/3/4). The photographs are arranged into three series: 1. Faculty, Staff, Trustees, and Honorary Degree Recipients; 2. Presidents; and, 3. Other Individuals. Contents of Series 1 and 3 are arranged...

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...