October 5, 2009 - TBA
Bancroft Library Corridor Cases

This exhibit profiles the Bancroft Library's efforts to preserve the 3.6 million negatives of the Fang Family San Francisco Examiner Photograph Archive. It highlights forty-nine of the newspaper's dramatic images of the 1934 Longshoremen's Strike that closed down San Francisco’s waterfront seventy-five years ago. It also offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of archival work funded by the Save America’s Treasures grant program and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In 2006 the Bancroft Library received the San Francisco Examiner Photograph Archive from the Fang family and the Anschutz Corporation. It is a priceless visual record of the Bay Area throughout the 20th century and is the largest single gift of visual materials to the library. Its receipt more than doubled Bancroft’s photographic holdings.

Since receiving the archive, staff have been working to stabilize and preserve this irreplaceable historical record. All 3.6 million negatives have now been re-housed and placed in a cold vault maintained at 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Work continues with support from the Save America’s Treasures grant program, and the collection will be open to
researchers in 2010.

The exhibit is open during the operating hours of The Bancroft Library.