Archives West Finding Aid

Prior to the digital era, when materials from MASC's photographic collections needed reproduced, the originals had to be sent to WSU's Photo Services, where a negative was created from the print, and then a new print made. The print was provided to the requester, and the negative retained in a negative file, separate from the originals. While a large majority of the materials here are duplicates of MASC originals, a small number were created from non-MASC materials.

This collection is maintained primarily as a reference tool for locating original images in cases where negative numbers have been used in citations or otherwise used as identifiers. Each negative is identified by a number of the formnat YY-CCCC, where YY is the final two digits of the year, and CCCC is a three or four digit number identifying the chronological order of the creation of the negative in that year. These numbers were frequently used as an identifier in publications. Additionally, a public "card catalog" of commonly used prints, created primarily from these negatives, remains in use in MASC and these numbers are frequently used on those cards.