Welcome to Ohrstrom Library Digital Archives

The St. Paul’s School Archives is a collection of primary source materials preserved for their permanent administrative, legal, fiscal, or historical value.

Examples of records retained by the Archives include School publications such as the yearbook; thousands of still photographs; the papers and correspondence of many former faculty and Rectors; old record books, letters, diaries and journals; and the non-current files and records of various administrative offices which have permanent historical value. Published materials are available to anyone for research or reading. Unpublished materials may be subject to restrictions which have been placed on them by the donor or by the School.

The Ohrstrom Library Digital Archives website presents a selection of digitized images from the over 30,000 photographs that are a part of the St. Paul’s School Archives collection.  The goal of OLDA is to increase access to archives materials, sharing the rich visual history of St. Paul’s School through an easy-to-browse web experience.

The OLDA website has been designed specifically to generate a sense of discovery for the user, establishing relationships between images through informed descriptive methods. Each image page provides a variety of browsing opportunities – through tagged links arranged by subject, Form year, Rectorship, and other classifications, as well as technical metadata about the digitized image presented online. Selected images are curated into themed exhibits that expand the information of individual item descriptions. In addition to tagged browsing, all images can be searched using the search box located in the header, and each image page provides a place for users to contribute tags to increase the knowledge base.


Begin exploring OLDA by clicking on the randomly selected images below:

(Refresh your browser window for a new random selection of thumbnails.)

Or use these links to access OLDA images by: