Dartmouth College Library
Collection Management & Development Program
Collection Development Policy
ARCHIVES: PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORDS
- COLLECTION AREA
- GENERAL PURPOSE
- DARTMOUTH COLLEGE PROGRAM
- GENERAL SUBJECT BOUNDARIES
- GEOGRAPHIC AREAS
- TYPES OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
- SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND MANUSCRIPTS
- OTHER RESOURCES AVAILABLE
- COLLECTING INTENSITY
- CREATION DATE
- REVISION DATE
- BIBLIOGRAPHER
Archives: Photographic Records
The function of this section of the College Archives is to receive, preserve, and create access tools to the images created by the College Photographer -- Dartmouth College-related scenes, events, and people -- for students, administrators, alumni, and the public at large. The collection covers the late 1930's to the present and includes more than 400,000 images.
Photographic Records was a section of the College Photographer's office until the retirement of the first College Photographer. In 1988, Photographic Records became the responsibility of the College Archives.
Photographic Records holds the official visual documentation of the College as created by the College Photographer and freelance photographers under contractual agreements. The collection is used by students, faculty, and administration to illustrate papers, reports, publications, lectures, and exhibitions. It is also used to market the College, and to provide alumni with visual documentation of the College. In addition, a large clientele exists outside the Dartmouth community which makes use of Photographic Records. The clientele includes mainstream book publishers, magazine editors, film makers, and members of professional organizations.
Subject boundaries are Dartmouth College events, sites, and people.
Chiefly Dartmouth College and facilities owned by the College elsewhere, and locations where Dartmouth events may take place.
Photographic Records houses 35mm and 4x5 negatives, as well as contact prints. 35mm slides are also received. Finished photoprints, snapshots, and negatives without contact prints are not collected; these items are transferred to the College Archives' Photograph Files. Photographic Records is primarily a receiving agency in the sense that it does not prepare copy prints for patrons, nor does it shoot photographs. (It does coordinate the copy print service with photo labs and provides scanned images to clients with College-based projects.)
Photographic Records is part of Special Collections.
Also in the College Archives is a subject arrangement of visual images of the College and local area. The Photograph Files are 65 linear feet of black and white prints, snapshots (black and white, and color), albumen prints, cyanotypes, ferrotypes, and other prints. These photographs are received as gifts from alumni, campus offices, the Hanover Historical Society, and others. Several other agencies on campus house current photographic material relating to the College. These are Public Affairs, DCAD, Alumni Records, the graduate schools, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, The Dartmouth, Aegis, Hopkins Center, Hood Museum of Art, and other campus units.
Existing strength of collection: 4
Actual current level of collection activity: 4
Desirable level of collecting to meet program needs: 5
Existing strength and current level of collecting of photography is intense. Gaps appear where a photographer was not hired for events or when the College did not have an official photographer. In its heyday, the College Photographer was a full-time position, had a staff of 3, and a cadre of student photographers. Since 1994, the College Photographer has been a part-time position without support staff or student photographers. There have been periods of time the position was not filled and local photographers were contracted for specific shoots; the contract photographers retained their negatives. It is a huge loss to the College community that recent visual documentation of the College is inadequate as compared to the years of a well-staffed College Photographer's office.
November 19, 1986 Kenneth C. Cramer
March 1998
Anne Ostendarp
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Last updated January 28, 1999 by: CMDC@Dartmouth.Edu (jdh)