Photographs (Photo Morgue), 1904-1986 and undated

The photo series, consisting of emulsion prints (usually 8 inches x 10 inches glossy gelatin bromide black-and-white), laserphotos, negatives (usually 4 inches x 5 inches flexible-support acetate), transparencies, slides, and undeveloped film, was originally assembled and arranged over decades as photographs were taken, used, and sometimes re-used in the newspaper. Stored originally in steel filing cabinets, the staff of the Baltimore News American and its antecedent newspapers filed the photographs according to intellectual content, rather than as chronological evidence of separate news stories or by photographer name. The three main groupings were geographical, biographical, and subject, each arranged alphabetically. As a result, the photos relating to each subject or personal (or corporate) names were maintained together.

While the original physical arrangement of the photo morgue has not been maintained above the folder level, the intellectual arrangement within each original envelope of related photographs has been maintained. The metadata of the original envelopes has been captured on new acid-free folders and externally in a database (and separate from this finding aid). Available only in the Maryland Room, this database allows name and subject searching of all of the processed photographic prints, regardless of whether they were originally considered geographical, biographical, or subject oriented. Using the database, the metadata of the photographs can be arranged alphabetically to approximate the physical order of the photo morgue at the series level. Please contact the appropriate curator for more information.

The exact number of photographic prints is currently unknown, but it may exceed well over a million images. About 500,000 photographic prints and 100,000 film negatives have been processed. Approximately 500,000 film negatives, as well as the transparencies, slides, and undeveloped film, along with one box of photographic prints from Maryland Living, the News American's Sunday Magazine during the 1960s and 1970s, remain unprocessed.

In 2018 and 2020, the University of Maryland, College Park received two transfers of News American photographic prints, acetate and nitrate negatives, and glass plate negatives from the Special Collections department of the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. These transfers added 431.25 linear feet to the photographs series. This subset of materials is arranged by format and/or size then alphabetically by subject within their respective sizes and formats. Other than the necessary preservation actions needed to safely move the materials to the University of Maryland, College Park, these materials remain unprocessed and do not appear in the database.