Project Information
This finding aid was created as part of a two-year Bancroft Library project funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The project, which ran from June 1997 through May 1999, sought to provide access to the Bancroft Library collection of negatives through appraisal and selective rehousing and description. The secondary goal of the project was to "serve as the fundamental first step toward bringing together the complete News-Call Bulletin archive" in the form of an on-line guide to all parts of the archive that were dispersed to various repositories. (See finding aid for entire dispersed collection.)
Selection
The volume of negatives present required that appraisal and selection be carried out. It was impossible to re-sleeve and provide item-level descriptions for each of the 365,000 or more images present. The appraisal process sought to balance considerations of physical risk and historical significance or research value. Glass plates (about 30,000 in number) and early (pre-safety) film were deemed to be most at risk of deterioration or damage, and were therefore a high priority for individual sleeving. They clearly could not be safely used in their unsleeved and poorly boxed state. These items were limited to Part 1 of the collection, most of which was already listed at the item level, therefore determining an appropriate level of description based upon research value was not necessary. (See Guide to Descriptive Text and Searching: Part 1.)
The half-million film negatives of Part 2 and Part 3, however, required appraisal of subject content to determine priority. Staff met with the Curator of Pictorial Collections to determine high-interest subject areas. Negatives within these areas were selected for individual archival sleeving and detailed description within this finding aid. Negatives of lower priority were retained in the collection, but they were left batched in their original sleeves and were described collectively in brief summary entries in the finding aid. Selected, resleeved negatives, therefore, will be found interfiled with lower-interest negatives still sleeved in groups, as received by the library.
Part 2 was largely arranged in subject categories, but a chronological section was also present, and all of Part 3 was in chronological order. (See Arrangement: Part 2 and Arrangement: Part 3.) Selection was, therefore, much simpler for Part 2 Subject Files. Entire subject categories were re-sleeved and described in detail, and other categories were simply summarized. Chronological files required much more analysis, and a more subjective approach was used. Staff examined the sleeves for each month of the files, determined which negatives were worthy of brief mention, and which were of such high interest that they should be re-sleeved and described at the detailed sleeve level. This determination was based upon the sleeve annotations made by newspaper staff.
Images from the chronological files deemed worthy of mentioning fell into the following categories, which are comparable to selected Part 2 Subject File sections:
- Education
- Schools, colleges, classrooms, conferences, awards
- Juvenile Delinquents & Child Welfare
- Youth activities, organizations, facilities, Scouting, Juvenile Hall, etc.
- Labor
- Unions events, meetings, strikes, workers on the job
- Military and war subjects
- Ships, troops, committees, civil defense, veterans
- San Francisco Bay Area
- City officials (mayors, judges, congressmen, representatives, police chiefs, city councils, local elections, etc.)
- Police brutality
- Parks, open spaces, and environmental issues
- Cable cars
- Urban, industrial, and suburban landscapes (buildings, neighborhoods, street scenes)
- Cityscapes
In addition, negatives from the following categories were also considered worthy of description:
- Watershed events
- Popular culture (indicators or symbols of the era)
- Social or cultural events (major openings, conferences, conventions, luncheons, etc.)
- National politics, international events, etc.
- Communism and Cold War (Un-American Activities hearings, communists, arrests, etc.)
- Presidents, senators, governors, national candidates, ambassadors, etc.
- Movie stars, celebrities
- New technology: "atomic age" in energy, health & national defense
- Ethnicity and race relations
- Police raids: narcotics, bars and nightclubs
- Any large groups of views of a single event or subject, or any specific subject which recurs repeatedly (thus indicating major news interest at the time.)
Of these, approximately fifteen percent were selected for sleeving and detailed description. This determination was made by staff with significant time restraints, and background research and individual image examination were not possible. There are, therefore, inconsistencies in selection. The intent was that those selected be the best, most recognizable, most illustrative examples of images from selection categories above. Examples of the subjects looked for included: major personalities or leaders (US presidents, California governors, state, national and international leaders), watershed (cultural, political, or military) events defining the era, urban/suburban change, neighborhoods, labor, race issues, social movements, new technology, science etc.
It was decided not to attempt to mention every occurrence of negatives of events that occur on a regular basis or occur frequently in most months. Such images that were usually not noted in this finding aid include: Shriners and other fraternal organizations; Commonwealth Club; Chamber of Commerce lunches, etc. (unless a prominent figure is present); crime; sporting events (with no major celebrities); accidents; fires; births; divorces; custody cases; society page features; mayoral appearances; contest winners; and other images of purely local interest. It must be remembered that such images are present throughout the chronological files (1940-1965) and may be sought by date by browsing the files directly.
Stylistic Conventions
Approximately ten staff members contributed to the description of this collection over the two-year course of the project. As a result, some stylistic variation exists within the finding aid. An attempt was made to follow the Chicago Manual of Style for questions of capitalization, particularly with regard to personal titles. An attempt was also made to find authoritative forms of personal and corporate names in the on-line catalog of UC Berkeley and to standardize them accordingly. Other stylistic conventions apply only to the present finding aid:
San Francisco was the assumed location of all images, unless otherwise stated, therefore "San Francisco" was not included in descriptions and is not effectively searchable. (But "cityscapes" will yield views of the city itself.)
For elected city officials, names of their cities were given only if they were not San Francisco. For state officials, California is assumed unless another state is given.
Periods were omitted from initials in organizational names, such as UC Berkeley, YMCA, ILWU, IBM, US Navy, etc.
"SS", "USS" and similar abbreviations were omitted from ships' names. A ship's or boat's name was always followed by "(ship)", regardless of the type of vessel.
Diacritics (accent marks, acutes, etc.) were omitted.
Women's names were listed as "Mrs." plus surname only when their own first names were not provided on the original sleeves.
Titles of individuals and, in the case of officials or dignitaries, their country or state of origin were given in the order: Title + Name + Country. (Example: "Ambassador John Bull of Great Britain", rather than "British ambassador John Bull.")
Numbers lower than 100 were spelled out.
Housing
Rehousing of the collection was also achieved as part of the NHPRC-funded project. Archival boxes were used for the entire collection, and selected negatives were rehoused in individual archival sleeves. (Previously, groups of negatives were sleeved together, and some negatives were not sleeved at all.) All glass plates have been individually sleeved and stored in small padded boxes, with nine or ten plates to a box. All film negatives predating 1940 have been individually sleeved, for most of these had been housed in small boxes with poor quality, brittle sleeves or no sleeves whatsoever. For the bulk of the collection, only those film negatives selected for detailed description were individually resleeved. The remainder remain in their original paper sleeves, usually in batches. Resleeved items are filed behind their annotated original sleeves, and all are housed in cardfile boxes measuring 5x6x13 inches.
To learn more about these issues, please see the