Photographs: Presidents, Faculty, Staff, Trustees, Honorary Degree Recipients, and Others, 1830s to Present

Acquired: 1966. Accession No: May include 127, 128, 130, 133, 168, 175, 1986/010, 1986/029, 1987/069, 1988/101, 1989/026, 1989/037, 1989/064, 1989/078, 1989/101, 1991/140, 1991/052, 1991/140, 1993/052, 1995/019, 1999/119, 2001/022, 2010/083, 2011/005, 2011/032, 2013/012.

Restrictions: Unrestricted.

Rights: Those photographs taken for the college as works for hire belong to the college outright.  Photographs from the late twentieth century and later with stamps from photographic firms are more likely to have requirements as to credit lines or restrictions; consult the College Archivist.

Acquisition Note:

Most of the photographs of presidents, faculty, staff, trustees and honorary degree recipients were transferred from the Office of trhe Secretary after the establishment of the Archives in 1966.  Photographs have been received intermittently since that time from various offices on campus, primarily from the Office of Communications, and from private individuals.

The college hired freelance photographers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  In 1917 a college photographer position was created for Arthur Ludwig Princehorn.  He and his son Arthur Ewing Princehorn produced nearly all of the college’s negatives and photographs from 1917 to 1969 (see the Princehorn Family Papers, RG 30/416).  Sometimes photographers’ names appear stamped or inscribed on the backs of prints.

In 2009 the Communications Office moved to a different building on campus, and a great many photographs, negatives, and other visual materials were transferred to the Archives that year.  Most of this material dated from the 1980s through the early 2000s, and included a small amount of born digital photographs.

Related Materials:

Some photographs of faculty, staff, trustees and honorary degree recipients are filed in their files of text documents in RG 28.  Individuals with personal paper collections will be represented in those record groups, in addition to this group.  Presidents have their own record groups in RG 2, and in some cases also have personal paper groups.  Individuals from the early 19^th century may be represented in daguerreotypes, ambrotypes or tintypes in record group 32/3/4.  Faculty and staff may be represented in the records of their respective departments and offices.  Other related materials are as follows:

Students: World War I, RG 32/1

Class Albums, RG 32/3/3

Photograph Albums, RG 32/7

Hi-O-Hi Yearbook Photographs, RG 32/8

Slides, RG 32/9

Oversize Photographs, RG 32/10

Panorama and Rolled Miscellaneous Photographs, RG 32/11

Born Digital Photographs, RG 32/12

Paintings, Prints, Drawings, and Other Framed Items, RG 40

See also Archives digital collections at:

http://www.oberlin.edu/archive/digital/index.html

Finding Aid Revisions: Processed by Archives staff. Finding guide prepared by Anne Cuyler Salsich, 15 April 2014; revised May 2017.

Collection Material Type: Artificial Collection