PHOTOGRAPHS - RG005 Secretary of State

 

RG005_RS_03_036 – The James C. Kirkpatrick State Information Center, home of the Missouri Secretary of State in Jefferson City, c1992.

The Secretary of State’s (SOS) Office is home to the Missouri State Archives, which maintains its own photograph collection. Additionally, there are several other SOS divisions with photograph collections, listed below.

 

Publications:

Publications makes up the largest portion of the SOS photograph collection. This division is responsible for publishing the biennial Official Manual of the State of Missouri, also known as the Blue Book. As part of that process, the division collects portraits of state officials and other images used to illustrate the Blue Book. 

• View the Publications Non-Portrait Collection on our Missouri Digital Heritage website. This series contains images of government buildings and recreational sites across the state covering the 1920s-1970s. 

• The Publications Portrait Collection contains tens of thousands of portraits of state officials. It is currently not available online. (Researchers may also refer to MS391 Early Legislators Portrait Collection, which contains images from 1875-1888 that are not in the broader Portrait Collection. The finding aid to MS391 is online.) 

• Publications often runs public photograph contests. The contests are usually thematic, g., agriculture, scenic views or people and the winning photographs are published in the Blue Book. Winning images may be found printed in the Blue Book collection websites (1987-2000) and (2001-present). A subset of over 1,700 photographs submitted to three Vanishing Missouri Blue Book photograph contests is available on our Missouri Digital Heritage website.

 

Records Services:

Records Services comprises the Missouri State Archives, Records Management and Local Records. Each arm of the Records Services Division conducts different operations related to storing, preserving, conserving and providing access to Missouri’s governmental records. Records Services images are not online.

 

Secretaries of State:

The Archives maintains photograph collections from recent Secretaries of State, including John R. Ashcroft, Jason Kander and Robin Carnahan. Secretaries’ images are not online. (See also the Archives’ manuscript collections website for additional secretaries’ collections.)

 

State Library:

The Archives has a small collection of images from the Missouri State Library. These consist of the State Library, a few local libraries across the state, Wolfner Talking Book and Braille Library, library patrons and library-related technology. These images are not online. 

Contact the Archives with questions at (573) 751-3280 or [email protected].