These records demonstrate first-hand the actions and day-to-day activities of your organization. Be sure to include appropriate metadata (including a title, the event and date, and the name of the photographer, if you have it) with these images.

Transfer to Archives: Annually

Formal group photos, like this 1924 photo of honorary athletic sorority Delta Phi Rho Alpha, provide one way of identifying a student group’s members for a particular academic year, and may show underdocumented things, like a group’s uniform. They’re posing on the Washington Duke statue on East Campus, by the way.

Documentary photographs, taken to record group activities, have their place in the University Archives as well. These photos, taken by the Duke Student Movement, give an eyewitness account of a protest that the group organized in response to an advertisement against reparations to enslaved people placed in the Chronicle by conservative writer David Horowitz and his Center for the Study of Popular Culture.

Why is this historically important?

• Sometimes, a photograph of an event is more telling or even more impactful than a narrative or other textual document. The photos of the protest show us the statements on the protesters’ signs, while the Delta Phi Rho Alpha photo shows us what women’s physical education clothing looked like in the 1920s.

Photograph of Delta Phi Rho Alpha, 1924. From the University Archives Photograph Collection, 1861-ongoing. Duke University Archives.

Photographs of Duke Student Movement Protest, March 28, 2001. From the Duke Student Movement Scrapbook, 2001 in the Black History at Duke Reference Collection, 1948-2001 and undated. Duke University Archives.