Contact Us
Summer Hours
Monday - Thursday: 8am to 5pm
Friday: 8am - noon
Saturday & Sunday: Closed
All Library Hours
Call or email us to make an appointment for a time outside regular hours of service.
Max Chambers Library
2nd floor, Rm 215
(405) 974-2882
Nicole Willard, Senior Director
nwillard@uco.edu
Archives Image Gallery
Capture the history and beauty of Oklahoma with low-cost, high-quality prints for your research project, home, business, or office. They make memorable gifts, too!
UCO Archives Photograph Collection
The UCO Archives Photograph Collection is comprised of more than 35,000 images (3,000 currently online) dating between 1854-2006 that cover a wide variety of subjects: university life, early Edmond, scenes of Oklahoma settlement, Native American people, businesses, transportation, festivities, recreational pursuits and much more.
This extensive collection is a result of gifts from individuals, campus organizations, as well as public and private agencies. The collection is comprised of numerous photographic formats from glass plates to digital images, and includes everything from amateur family photographs to portraits from top professionals in the business. As a result, the visual quality of the photographs may vary widely from image to image. This rich visual heritage presents a unique view of our past.
Digitization of the historical photograph collection began in 1995 and is an ongoing project. The collections of several eminent donors including Frances Bryan, Frank Buttram, Linda Jones, Bertha Scoggins, and Bill Williams are included in the online gallery.
Oklahoma Stock Image Collection
Oklahoma and Native American People, buildings, scenes of Oklahoma settlement and other events.
Jim Argo Collection
The collection currently contains just over 2400 photos. The images in the collection represent present day Oklahoma with such themes as landmarks, skylines, festivals, museums, recreation, rodeos and cowboys. The photos date from the 1960s through the 2000s.
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Argo co-authored two books on Oklahoma for the Oklahoma Historical Society and was a major photographic contributor to 12 others. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 1997.
Argo retired as The Oklahoman photo editor in 2003. He has done three books on Oklahoma since retirement, Images of History, Oklahoma Impressions, and Oklahoma City Impressions.
The Frances Bryan Collection
Contains over 500 images that focus mainly on architecture from 1966 to the present. Most of the images document Edmond, Oklahoma but also included are town photos of Guthrie, El Reno, Yukon, OKC, Locust Grove and Chandler.
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After graduation from Southeast High School in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1953, Bryan received a one-year scholarship to study at the Kansas City Art Institute, courtesy of the Kansas City Advertising Club.
At the end of that first year, her father's untimely death prompted her to leave academia and go to work. Bryan joined a crew of window decorators at the Palace Clothing Company in downtown Kansas City. They were responsible for three stores: downtown, North Kansas City and Prairie Village. Bryan enjoyed creating window displays, but after several years went scouting for better pay.
Bryan was working for IBM Corporation and transferred to their Oklahoma City office in 1961. After marrying Don Bryan, she was officially an Edmondite and took advantage of the close proximity to UCO to attend art and creative writing classes.
Bryan has designed greeting cards, teaching aids, business logos and the Official Seal of Edmond. Designed and produced with art partner, Pat Darcey, the MY-TOWN-TOO project which is small wood replicas of Old North Tower, the old police station, Wide-A-Wake Café and Rodkey Mill. This project was one of the official mementos of Oklahoma City's Centennial Celebration.
But, chiefly, Bryan is a watercolor artist, inspired by my collection of photographic images of "old town" Edmond and its environs. When Edmond's pre-statehood homes and farms began to make way for tract homes, strip malls, and parking lots, her photographic intent took a serious turn to document the area's architectural history that she loved so much.
Essay: Frances Bryan on photography and the growth of Edmond.
Rubye McCan Collection
The Rubye McCan Collection consists of over 600 images, mostly from the 1960s through the 1980s. Oklahoma subjects in the photos include parks, lakes and rivers, train depots, grain elevators, barns, scenic landscapes, sunsets, mountains, boats and Oklahomans in recreational pursuits.
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As a founding member of the Oklahoma Watercolor Society she exhibited her one person show developed to take art and Oklahoma history to small towns across the state. Her works have also been shown several times at the Oklahoma State Capitol and around Oklahoma City.
Ed Pugh Collection
The Edward Pugh Collection contains 514 images documenting Oklahoma's natural resources and historic black communities in Oklahoma City from the 1960s through the 1970s.
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Born and raised in Oklahoma City, Edward Jackson Pugh was a geographer, resource conservationist, faculty member and a prolific researcher and writer. Ed Pugh spent three years in the U.S. Army serving in Europe and South Vietnam, earning the Bronze Star and Purple Heart before his discharge in 1969. He would go on to earn a B.A. in Geography from Central State College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma.
In 1979 he joined Governor George Nigh's staff serving as Senior Executive Assistant for Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Affairs advising on the management and protection of Oklahoma's natural resources. Dr. Pugh would also serve President George Nigh as Executive Assistant at the University of Central Oklahoma where he would later become a full time Assistant Professor in the History and Geography Department.
