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Library Partners with Yale to Digitize Local Historian’s Photographs

Hundreds of historic photographs collected by the late Humboldt State University photographer Peter Palmquist (’65, Art) will be available online for students, researchers and historians later this year, thanks to a partnership between the HSU Library and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The approximately seven hundred images taken by various Humboldt County photographers capture the landscape and people of Northern California during the mid 20th century. They will be available through the HSU Library’s website in August.

“This is a great partnership between the HSU Library and Yale that meets the HSU Library’s mission of increasing access to resources, while supporting scholarship worldwide,” HSU Library Dean Teresa Grenot says.

The images are part of the Beinecke’s Peter E. Palmquist Collection, a massive compendium of photographs, manuscripts, books and daguerreotypes that Palmquist—the university’s photographer from 1961 to 1989—collected from 1971 until 2001.



Peter Palmquist, the university’s photographer from 1961 to 1989, is considered Humboldt County’s most prolific researcher of historic photography, amassing an enormous collection of photographs, manuscripts and daguerrotypes from 1971 to 2001.

During his career, Palmquist amassed an extensive collection that includes hundreds of thousands of items of significant research value to historians. His interests were broad and included photographic history and techniques; women in photography; the American West; Humboldt County and Native American history. He also amassed the largest collection of images by A.W. Ericson, a regional photographer active between 1880 and 1920 who documented Native American culture and the Humboldt County logging, fishing, and shipbuilding industries.

“This is a gentleman who published over 40 books, over 200 articles and was a self trained historian of photography,” Beinecke Archivist Matthew Mason (’93, History) says of Palmquist. “He collected for less than three decades and in that time, was able to amass a rich collection and create a great historical resource.”

Considered the area’s most prolific researcher of historic photography, Palmquist sold his collection to Yale University in 2001, citing the institution’s extensive cataloging resources. Approximately 5,000 study prints and negatives were donated to HSU Library Special Collections after his death. About 3,300 of those can be researched online through the Humboldt Room Photograph Collections Database.

In 2010, HSU Library Archivist Edie Butler travelled to Yale on a Tracy Fund grant through the Humboldt Area Foundation to better understand how HSU’s Palmquist Collection overlaps with the Beinecke’s Palmquist Collection. In the process, she gathered valuable historical data to supplement the information in HSU’s collection. Butler, a friend of the Palmquists’ who was previously Director of the Humboldt County Historical Society, also identified several clusters of images to digitize based on their perceived research value to local historians. She will return to Yale this spring to complete the selection.



This image by well-known photographer R.J. Baker shows children sitting in a local lumber yard. It’s part of the Peter E. Palmquist Working Photograph Collection at HSU, which is searchable through the library’s special collections website.

Later this year, the images will be scanned by the Beinecke, cataloged by HSU and hosted either through HSU or Yale’s website. The Beinecke’s scanning technology will allow researchers to view the images at 400 dots per inch (DPI)—a high resolution for historic photos.

Palmquist grew up near Ferndale, Calif., where he taught himself photography. He attended HSU, then known as Humboldt State College, from 1961-1965 and became the official university photographer while he was still a student. He also taught photography and photographic history.

In addition to the Palmquist Collection, HSU Library Special Collections hosts several other online photography collections. Last month, the University Library digitized the Schoenrock Collection, an archive of 104 images taken on and around the Yurok Indian Reservation from 1890 to 1925.

Consult the HSU Library Special Collections for more information about The Peter E. Palmquist Working Photograph Collection and other collections at HSU.