Finding Photographs at Wilson Special Collections Library: Home

This guide is designed to assist researchers in finding photographs at Wilson Special Collections Library. Wilson Library holds hundreds of thousands of photographs across collections and in a wide variety of formats, including film, slides, and print. This research guide is intended to help researchers navigate library catalog and description information to find photographs utilizing multiple methods.

Wilson Library is home to five different collections, all of which possess photographs in some shape or form. This section will help you identify the collecting units and the type of photographs you might find within them.

Portrait of Omar Ibn Said (1770?- 1864?), circa 1855, Ambrotype Collection (P0007), North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library.

The North Carolina Collection began the formal development of a photographic archive in 1929. Today the photographic holdings total an estimated four million images that include examples of all major formats from daguerreotype to digital.

The photographs are historically descriptive and documentary in nature. They provide a visual record of North Carolina’s people, places, and events. Images exist for all 100 of the state’s counties.  The photographic archives is also the major repository for historical images documenting the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Photograph album, "Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Tribe, Inc.," page 37, in the John Blackfeather Jeffries Collection on Occaneechi Indians #5761, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Southern Historical Collection is home to over 5,000 distinct archival collections. These are each comprised of unique primary documents, such as diaries, correspondence, photographs, maps, and oral histories. We offer robust documentation of all periods of Southern history since the late eighteenth century, particularly the Antebellum era through the Civil Rights Movement.

Gospel Awards: Allen White, Orpheum marquee, 08 December 1968, in the William R. Ferris Collection #20367, Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Southern Folklife Collection is one of the nation’s foremost archival resources for the study of American folk music and popular culture. SFC holdings extensively document all forms of southern musical and oral traditions across the entire spectrum of individual and community expressive arts, as well as mainstream media production. The SFC is especially rich in materials documenting the emergence of old-time, country-western, hillbilly, bluegrass, blues, folk, gospel, rock and roll, Cajun and zydeco musics.

Silent Sam Down, image 19, in the Office of University Communications Records #40482, University Archives, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The University Archives is the official repository for the historically valuable, unpublished records of both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the major administrative offices of the UNC System headquartered in Chapel Hill. Records in our holdings date from the chartering of the university in 1789 to the present.