The picture press in archives: facing the institutional challenges of newspaper photo collections

Over the last few decades newspaper companies have either sold or donated large-scale photographic press archives to collecting institutions of all kinds. This paper explores the major challenges faced by museums, archives and libraries acquiring large scale press archives through two case studies carried out in 2018. The Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at York University acquired the photo collection of the Toronto Telegram in 1974 and 1987, and the Archives of Ontario acquired the Globe and Mail photo collection in 2016. Each institution has been forced to address the logistical issues of the physical and intellectual organization of these enormous collections while also dealing with the preservation problems specific to photographic archives. This paper looks at relevant literature, presents findings of my site visits as well as interviews with collections managers at the two institutions.