Guide to Descriptive Text and Searching
Within this finding aid, descriptive approaches to each part of the collection vary according to the arrangement of that part and the descriptive resources available.
Part 1 (1915-1939)
Descriptions are simple entries for each item number or range of numbers, based upon the original Call Bulletin card index received with the collection. Typically, an entry will consist of a personal name, an event, or group name and its corresponding item number (or numbers) and box number. No standardized vocabulary or subject terms were employed, and little or no spelling checking or standardization of names was performed. When no descriptions were found for items, entries were provided by Bancroft Library staff, usually from annotations on the negatives themselves. If no annotations were present, a brief bracketed description of the image content was provided based upon image examination.
It should be noted that many items within the numbered ranges for Part 1 are not present in the collection. Therefore frequent gaps in numbering are present in this finding aid. No images for these missing numbers are present. For many of these missing numbers staff have listings of what the subjects were, however these entries were not included here. Library staff can provide assistance locating such entries in an on-site database for those researchers interested in knowing about images that once existed but are no longer extant.
Part 1a (1915-1939)
As in Part 1, descriptions are simple entries for each item number or range of numbers. However, no lists or index cards were received with the collection, so descriptions are based upon original negative sleeve or box annotations, often supplemented by observations made by staff. Many images were received unsleeved and housed in original glass plate boxes with brief annotations of their contents, such as "Egan trial". In cases such as this, where many images of related events were present, some research as to context was carried out, and descriptions were thus supplemented. In most cases it was not possible to gather such added information or verify names and contexts.
Part 1 and Part 1a search recommendations
By subject: brief, single-term keyword searching is advised. Surnames alone for individuals are suggested, as form of first names, initials, etc. may vary. Women are often listed under their husband's names, preceded by "Mrs." The bulk of images are portraits, but some searches on locations, building names, corporate names, organizations, sporting events or similar terms may yield results.
By date: chronological arrangement is only approximate, and dates are usually impossible to determine. When a date was present, however, it is included as part of the caption. Therefore, a free-text search on a given year ("1924", for example) may locate some negatives for that approximate period. Browsing nearby entries is then the only way to look for events of a given date. Staff have noted that occasional images of a later year preceded those of earlier years, and that sporting events are frequently dated but numbered out of sequence. The rule that lower item numbers correspond with earlier dates must be used with caution for chronological browsing of the finding aid.
Part 2 (1938-1951)
Two levels of description are present for all subject groupings, and three levels of description are present for the chronological General File portion of Part 2 (1938-December 1951). The top level is the most general description, briefly summarizing large numbers of negatives. Selected subjects are then described at the more detailed levels.
All subject groupings have a summary description providing an overview of the contents of that section. Information provided will be: the subject category name, the range of numeric codes that represent it, the box numbers that contain it, an estimate of the number of images present, the years present in it, and a variable-length summary of the types of images or subject content present. In these summaries a few lines of text may represent several hundred or several thousand negatives.
Many subject groupings will have no further description provided. These sections were deemed by curators and staff to have less potential research value than other portions of the collection, and resources were not available to provide exhaustive descriptions of all sections. They tend to be subjects of purely local interest, such as auto accidents, animals, crime, and sporting events. Researchers may find useful images within these briefly summarized sections, but items will have to be found by paging the likely boxes and examining their contents.
Selected subject groupings thought to have higher research demand were described at a second, more detailed level of description. These subject areas are Education; Fairs (Golden Gate International Exposition); Juvenile Delinquents and Child Welfare; Labor; Military, War & Wartime (selected subcategories); San Francisco (Police Brutality); San Francisco (Miscellaneous); and Weather (Floods).
In addition to the summary descriptions described above, these selected categories were described at the sleeve level. (Each original sleeve represented a single photographic shoot or assignment. A sleeve could contain one negative or several dozen related negatives.) A finding aid entry at the sleeve level provides the following information: brief summary line of subject content, date or date range, call number, part number, box number, code number (a subject-based filing code), original sleeve number or range of sleeve numbers (for multiple sleeves on a single topic or event), number of negatives, and a content description note which may consist of numerous lines of text.
Descriptions of the chronological General File of Part 2 consist of the summary descriptions (described above) for each month, a list of selected highlights, and sleeve-level entries for subjects of highest historical interest. (See Project Information: Selection.) Text within the list of highlights for a month is arranged chronologically, in the order the negatives are filed. Neither dates nor code numbers are given for most entries, but entries of higher potential interest or those with a relatively large number of negatives are followed by a bracketed code number and an estimate of the number of images present. A subject with related images on more than one date in a single month is usually entered only once, in place chronologically where the first occurrence is found. Additional filing codes under which later occurrences may be found are noted in brackets following the entry.
Of the highlights just described, about ten to twenty percent were selected for detailed sleeve-level descriptions in the same format used for sleeve-level descriptions within the Subject Files (above).
A sample sleeve-level finding aid entry follows:
Charles Lindbergh and Senator D. Worth Clark -- Sir Francis Drake Hotel (July 1, 1941)
BANC PIC 1959.010-NEG, Part 2, Box 161 [140299.09], 13 negatives
Images of Colonel Charles Lindbergh speaking with Senator D. Worth Clark of Idaho and speaking with press.
The first line is a brief summary of the sleeve contents, followed by the date in parenthesis.
The next line is the full collection call number, part number, box number, and bracketed code number, and negative count. Code numbers are followed by a decimal point and a sequential original sleeve number provided by Bancroft Library staff. Although not recorded in this finding aid, on the negative sleeves this number is followed by a colon and an item number, also assigned by Bancroft staff. Thus, a single image might be identified as "Part 2, 300412.2:5."
The lines following the call number and negative count are the content description notes. This text is based upon language found in newspaper staff annotations on the original sleeves, often clarified and supplemented by Bancroft Library staff. Minimal attempts were made to standardize phrasing, personal names, and language. Chiefly, this is free text with no formal subject analysis or standardized thesauri.
However, staff did attempt to facilitate searches by agreeing upon certain terms to use for certain subject matter. If these terms could not easily be used within a descriptive caption, they were included parenthetically. The most common terms used were:
| Afro-Americans | (Used for: African Americans, blacks) |
| atomic age | (Used for: nuclear or atomic technology or its resultant effects in popular culture and design. See also: civil defense) |
| censorship | (Used for: obscenity charges and political censorship cases) |
| child welfare | |
| cityscapes | (Used for: broad urban or suburban landscapes, skylines, etc.) |
| civil defense | (Used for: bomb shelters, evacuation plans, drills, etc.) |
| civil rights | (Used for: racial or ethnic discrimination, racial equality, the civil rights movement, and those involved.) |
| communism | (Used for: communists, and anti-communism, "red scare", cold war attitudes, un-American Activities hearings (HUAC)) |
| disabled persons | Used for (and with): handicapped, blind, deaf, paraplegic, crippled, and other terms for physical disabilities. |
| education | (Used for: schools, colleges, universities, classrooms, teachers, parents' and teachers' associations (PTA), etc.) |
| environment | (Used for: ecology, effects of urbanization & development, pollution, litter, etc.) |
| fashion | (Used for: chiefly clothing, occasionally design) |
| gambling | (Used for: chiefly raids and arrests of book makers) |
| gays and lesbians | (Used for: gay men, lesbians, homosexuality, and also cross-dressing, transvestitism, etc.) |
| health | (Used for: public health, medicine, hospitals, medical care) |
| housing | (Used for: public housing, housing developments, housing conditions, new types of housing) |
| juvenile delinquency | (Used for: gangs, juvenile crime, youth arrests) |
| labor | (Used for: organized labor, strikes, labor pickets and walk-outs, workers in the workplace) |
| narcotics | (Used for: drug seizures, arrests, drug raids, marijuana, heroin, opium, and controlled substances of all types) |
| neighborhood | (Used for: street scenes, intersections, localized city views of smaller scope than cityscapes, residential areas, commercial districts) |
| race relations | (Used for: racial tensions, ethnic tensions, changing attitudes to or awareness of racial issues. See also civil rights and social protests) |
| social protests | (Used for: non-labor-related pickets, sit-ins, demonstrations, marches, peace movement, anti-nuclear movement, etc. See also: civil rights) |
| space age | (Used for: space race, satellites, sputnik, rockets, astronauts, and related technology or popular interest) |
| transportation | (Used for: public transportation, buses, BART, transit, freeways, airplanes and airlines, etc.) |
The choice of terms was informed by, although not limited to, terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings. Due to time constraints, their application was not based upon extensive analysis and consideration, so inconsistencies may be detectable. They are intended to assist searchers in finding broad types of material, and finer distinctions have not been made. For example, issues of ethnicity may be included within the term "race relations", distinctions between "race relations" and "civil rights" are not always clear, and the term "gays and lesbians" may have incorrectly been applied to images relating to transvestitism or transsexuals. Distinctions between "neighborhood" views and "cityscapes" are also problematic. The intent of including the terms was to assist searchers in bringing together related material, and more critical analysis has been left to the researchers. It should also be noted that these terms were not used within the Subject File section of Part 2 if the term was redundant with the name of the subject section ("Education", for example, was not repeated within every education-related entry in the Education subject file!)
Part 2 search recommendations
By subject: browsing the finding aid by subject is possible for searches that might fall within one of the established subject categories (listed above under Arrangement: Part 2.) However, related subjects that logically should fall within these subject areas are sometimes found within the chronological General File. Therefore, keyword searching of the finding aid text is advisable. The standardized terms listed above will yield numerous "hits", but will probably not locate all potentially related images. Variations on likely descriptive words should be attempted. Brief, single-term keyword searching is advised. Surnames alone for individuals are suggested, as form of first names, initials, etc. may vary. For more refined searches, use the help screens to learn about proximity searching ("Aimee" within 2 words of "McPherson", for example) and other options.
By date: the General File may be browsed in this finding aid by date. Entries are selective, so if a specific event of known date is sought and it does not appear in the finding aid, it is advisable to request the relevant boxes and browse the collection directly. Because of the Subject Files, chronological searching is quite complex. Views taken on any given day might be found under subject, in date order in the General File, or in the General File but filed behind related images of an earlier date. (For example, if a trial started on May 3, 1942 and ended in February 1943, all related images might be filed with the May 1942 images!) For images of recognized historic importance that were selected for detailed description in this finding aid, dates may be searched as strings of text, such as "March 15, 1954" or "March within 2 words of 1954."
Part 3 (1951-1965)
Descriptions are based upon the strict chronological arrangement of this section. As with the General File of Part 2, three levels of description are used: Month Summaries, Selected Highlights, and Selected Sleeve Entries.
Descriptive text follows the format and conventions of Part 2 (described above), except that there are no code numbers and dates function as filing codes, presented in a six-digit month-day-year (MM-DD-YY) format. The selected highlights under each month summary tend to be much longer than those of Part 2, because no negatives were removed from chronological files to subject files after December 1951.
Text within the list of highlights for a month is arranged chronologically, in the order the negatives are filed. Dates are not given for most entries, but entries of higher potential interest or those with a relatively large number of negatives are followed by a bracketed date or range of dates and an estimate of the number of images present. A subject with related images on more than one date in a single month is usually entered only once, in place chronologically where the first occurrence is found. Subsequent related images are indicated by a notation of their dates in brackets following this entry.
Part 3 search recommendations
By subject: keyword searching of the finding aid text is recommended. The standardized terms listed above (under Guide to Descriptive Text and Searching: Part 2) will yield numerous "hits", but will probably not locate all potentially related images. Variations on likely descriptive words should be attempted. Brief, single-term keyword searching is advised. Surnames alone for individuals are suggested, as form of first names, initials, etc. may vary. Use the help screens to learn about proximity searching ("Richard" within 2 words of "Nixon", for example) and other options.
By date: all of Part 3 may be browsed in this finding aid by date. Entries are selective, so if a specific event of known date is sought and it does not appear in the finding aid, it is advisable to request the relevant boxes and browse the collection directly. For images of recognized historic importance that were selected for detailed description in this finding aid, dates may be searched as strings of text, such as "March 15, 1964" or "March within 2 words of 1964."
Part 4 (Photographic Prints)
Part 4 is largely unarranged. A preliminary container list is the only description available. The contents listed for each box or carton are intended to give researchers a general idea of the contents of that container, and are by no means complete. Library staff listed personal names or topical subjects which actually appeared on folder headings or were present in large numbers, but there are many other names and subjects within the same alphabetic range which do not have separate folders and which are not noted in this finding aid. Until a full listing is created, alphabetic browsing of the containers themselves is the only means of determining what individual images are present. However, such browsing is not permissable until rehousing and foldering is completed. (Direct inquiries about access to this unprocessed material, in writing, to: the Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library.)
Additional Notes on Searching
Card Catalog
A card catalog of the negative files was received from the newspaper as part of the gift to The Bancroft Library. It consists almost entirely of personal names, with occasional corporate names. There is no subject indexing. The card catalog is divided into three parts, just as the negative files are. Its coverage of Part 1 (ca. 1915-ca. 1939) has been entirely converted to digital form and included as Part 1 of this finding aid. Part 2 and Part 3 of the card catalog have not been converted, and contain many personal names not found in the finding aid. It is clear that card catalog coverage is not complete, and that many images present are not indexed. (For this reason, it was decided not to use the card catalog as the basis for Parts 2 and 3 of the finding aid, but rather to work from the negatives themselves.) Researchers seeking images of specific persons not found within the on-line finding aid may contact the Curator of Pictorial Collections, The Bancroft Library, for an appointment to use the original card catalog.
Dates: Chronological Outline
If materials are wanted for a given year, at left, they may be found in the parts of the collection noted to the right:
| ca. 1915-1937 | Part 1 and Part 1a |
| 1938-1939 | Part 1, Part 1a, Part 2 |
| 1940-November 1951 | Part 2 (Subject Files or General File) |
| December 1951 | Part 2 (Subject and General File) and Part 3 |
| 1952-1965 | Part 3 |
Photographers
The works of many staff photographers are present within the negative files. Usually, a surname is typed or signed on the negative sleeves, particularly in later years of the files. (Photographers names are rarely present for the pre-1940 images in Part 1 and Part 1a). This finding aid does not provide for searching by photographer. The detailed sleeve-level descriptions provided are for a small, selected portion of the collection (less than 20%), therefore it was believed that including photographer's names would not be a significant help to researchers interested in finding the works of a given photographer - the majority of that photographer's works would have remained undescribed and un-indexed. Those interested in finding photographs by a specific photographer may use the list below as a guide and request negatives within the time frame that the photographer was employed. There is no assurance that the list is complete, but it is an attempt to identify photographers and their period of employment by the newspaper. The negative files for any year in which a photographer was employed are likely to have many of his or her images.
- Ken Adams: 1948-1960
- Lee Andersen: 1958
- Cantue (?)
- Cantwell: 1945
- Clifton: 1940
- Collins: 1945
- Doherty: 1938-1940
- Eastaff: 1945
- Edgren: 1950-1959
- Ellerback: 1937-1938
- Ellwood: 1941-1945
- Elwing: 1954-1956
- Emile: 1958
- Murray N. Fay: 1937-1947
- Jack French: 1940-1955
- Gouch(?): 1947
- Hart: 1944
- Hatch: 1945
- Johnny Hines: 1947-1959
- Hank Ingwersen: 1938-1964
- Bob Jones:1947-1964
- Les Kevie: 1938
- Knepher: 1944-1949
- Lozier: 1944-1946
- J. Marron: 1938-1947
- Miller: 1943
- "Monte" Monakee: 1937-1939
- Eddie(?) Murphy ("Murf"): 1959-1964
- Newfield: 1946-1948
- Bill Nichols: 1937-1940, 1958-1961
- Nickell: 1945-1952
- Nugent: 1945
- Pardini: 1956-1959
- Pete Peterson (perhaps Pete is nickname for Ed Peterson?): 1939-1964
- Ed Peterson (perhaps also known as "Pete"?): 1945, 1958, 1961
- Clark R. Place: 1959-1964
- Paul Quen: 1961
- Robbie (perhaps a nickname for Robbins?): 1955, 1959
- H.C. Robbins: 1950-1964
- Robertson: 1945-1946
- C.H. Smith: 1945-1946
- Simon Sterling: 1945
- Francis Stewart: 1937-1943
- Susse: 1940
- Sid Tate: 1945-1964
- Vick(?): 1941
- Stuart Walch: 1942-1944
- Bob Warren: 1959-1964
- Wass: 1945
- Warren West: 1945-1947, 1961(?)
To learn more about these issues, please see the