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 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 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...

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 Unit...

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 the...

Scope and Contents The Photograph Albums Collection comprises albums or album contents dating from 1861 to 2000. Fifteen of these date from the 19th century, with cartes-de-visite, collotypes, tintypes, cabinet cards, postcards, cyanotypes, and other early prints. Cyanotypes dominate the contents of albums dating from 1900 to 1910, typically taken by Oberlin students themselves. From the 1920s to the 1960s several College-produced albums feature quality gelatin silver prints made by...