The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin newspaper photograph archive and newsclipping files, ca. 1915-September, 1965

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Summary

Creators:
San Francisco Call San Francisco Call Bulletin San Francisco News-Call Bulletin News-Call Bulletin
Abstract:
This collections chiefly consists of photographic prints and newsclippings from the files of The News-Call Bulletin and its predecessors, The Call Bulletin The Call, The San Francisco News, which were daily newspapers of San Francisco, Calif.
Language:
English.

Background

Scope and content:

The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin photograph archive and clippings files represent the working files created and used by the staff of The Call, The Call Bulletin, The News, and The News-Call Bulletin newspapers between ca. 1915 and September 1965. (For an explanation of the relationship between these papers, see the Historical Note section of the finding aid for the entire dispersed collection.) All of the files cover news events of local, state, national, and international importance. While the emphasis is on local events of San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay Area, images and subjects from around the world are present, particularly in the form of photographic prints from news agencies and wire services.

Photographic prints

The photographic print files are primarily composed of images from news agencies and wire services depicting national and international events and people. These are interfiled with photographic prints made by local staff photographers and with studio portraits and promotional photographs supplied to the newspaper by families or agencies. It should be noted that the original Call Bulletin staff photographs present appear to be the images actually used for publication, as evident from pre-publication marking, cropping, and retouching. The dates represented appear to be ca. 1915-1965, but some earlier submitted portraits are included. The predominant format is 8x10 inch, but images of many sizes are present.

The main strength of the collection is coverage of local San Francisco Bay Area news events and people. Political, social, and cultural leaders, crime victims and suspects, celebrities, athletes and sporting events, accident scenes and victims, street scenes, shipping and waterfront views, and buildings are among the common subjects. Portraits and views of individuals at events predominate. Studio portraits of private citizens and promotional views submitted for publicity are present, and events across the nation and around the world are represented by photographs from news agencies and wire services.

Newsclippings

The clippings files consist of approximately 1,228 cubic feet of newsclippings stored in 273 filing cabinets. These files are estimated to contain 4.5 million clippings, filed alphabetically by personal names, subjects and geographic locations. They originated as two separate clippings "morgues", one from The San Francisco News (covering ca. 1927-August 10, 1959) and the other from The Call Bulletin and The News-Call Bulletin (covering ca. 1930-September 1965.) Both papers covered local, statewide, regional, national and international events and personalities, with a strong emphasis on local coverage.

Arrangement:

The majority of the photographic print files remain in their original order, as received by the library. Photographs of San Francisco places (buildings, streets, etc.) and portraits of famous individuals in state and local history are exceptions to this. Many of these have been removed to the general photographic subject files of The San Francisco History Center where they have been interfiled with images from numerous different sources.

The files that were not broken up and distributed to library subject files are divided into seven series, with an alphabetic code assigned to each series. The first five series appear to be from The Call Bulletin and The News-Call Bulletin, and the final two series are the files of The San Francisco News. Since these two groupings represent the files of separate newspapers over a roughly parallel period, there is significant overlap in content.

All of the series include interfiled Call Bulletin staff photographs, submitted photographs (studio portraits or promotional photos), and wire or news agency photographs. (Approximately 40% of the "People" files and probably up to 90% of some geographic files are from news agencies.) The alphabetic codes and their contents are summarized in the following table. Files are arranged alphabetically by subject within these codes.

Newspaper clippings are arranged alphabetically in vertical files under personal names, subjects and geographic locations.

Physical description:
1,280 cartons (ca. 1.2 million photographic prints) and ca. 4.5 million newsclippings

Access and use

Location of this collection:
San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102, US
Contact:
(415) 557-4567
sfhistory@sfpl.org
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