Posters

Documenting the wartime viewpoints and diverse political sentiments of the twentieth century, the Poster Collection has more than one hundred thousand posters from around the world and continues to grow. Thirty-three thousand are available online. Posters from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia/Soviet Union, and France predominate, though posters from more than eighty countries are included. Additional posters can be found in various individual archival collections.

Hoover Institution Archives Poster Collection

Soviet literacy posters

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Poster COLLECTION database

Posters from more than eighty countries, mainly from the twentieth century. 


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Posters in Archival Collections     Posters in Library Materials
"Wars We Should Fight" (1939; Annie Lee Guinther, artist), US 8176, Poster colle

Featured Find: Peace Posters

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

From 1935 to 1940, students from all over the United States participated in a contest to create posters inspired by the theme of Peace. The National Circulating Library of Students' Peace Posters, based in Philadelphia, sponsored the contest; in 1940, the winning posters were reproduced and sold as collectible, stamp-sized stickers. The sponsoring organization was founded by Nancy Babb, a Quaker who volunteered with the American Relief Administration's famine relief efforts in Russia in 1921.

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Victory to the just struggle of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Ango

Hoover Institution’s searchable online poster database has just expanded

Friday, July 6, 2012

With the recent addition of some ten thousand images from the United States, the Hoover Institution’s searchable online poster database now provides access to images of more than thirty thousand political posters. The posters, which represent more than eighty countries, range in date from the late 1800s to the late 1980s.

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US 555B, Poster collection, Hoover Institution Archives

Doughnut Lassies on World War I Posters

Monday, June 4, 2012

Political posters are powerful tools of persuasion and control via striking visual imagery. Scholarly interest in the strong visual images draws many researchers to Hoover's voluminous poster collection. Others mine more popular parts of the collection, such as this CBC article on National Doughnut Day, which highlights posters of US troops receiving doughnuts and coffee from Salvation Army doughnut lassies during World War I.

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Leicestershire Regiment recruiting poster, UK 425, Poster collection, Hoover Ins

Cinderella Story

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Letestan? This place name stopped me in my tracks as I was consulting our poster database. Although I have kept up with all the new countries of Central Asia, such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Letestan didn't ring any bells.

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Political Poster Collection, Italy 17,  Hoover Institution Archives

Antiques Roadshow at the Hoover Archives

Thursday, May 20, 2010

What’s it like hosting a camera crew from a major television show? At Hoover we've dealt with them before, including a team from Phoenix TV in China who taped the Stilwell diaries at Hoover. . . .

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Bolshevism is depicted as a huge red spider with a death’s head sitting on top of the globe in this German poster

Close to Five Thousand German Posters Added to Online Database

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

With the recent addition of more than 4,000 images from Germany, the Hoover Institution’s searchable online poster database now provides access to some 22,000 images of political posters in Hoover’s poster collection.

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Political Poster Collection, US 2490  Hoover Institution Archives

Hoover Institution Archives’ Political Posters Collection Featured on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow

Friday, August 14, 2009

Posters from the Hoover Archives’ Political Poster Collection featured in a segment of the PBS series Antiques Roadshow, which aired Monday, May 24.

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Stop War! vote Labour UK poster

Four Thousand British Posters Added to Online Poster Database

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

With more than four thousand images from the United Kingdom having been recently added, the Hoover Institution’s online, searchable poster database now has some eighteen thousand images of political posters from its collection.

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FR 715 Drawing of a nurse attending civilians in a devastated village.

Archival Perspectives on Hoover’s Poster Digitization Project

Monday, April 13, 2009

Archival considerations in the development of Hoover's poster digitization project are described in the winter 2009 issue of the Society of California Archivists Newsletter

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Contact

Contact L&AFor assistance contact the Visual Collections staff at hoover_visuals [at] stanford [dot] edu, or contact hooverarchives [at] stanford [dot] edu or call 650-723-3563

US Posters

Two hundred and fifty US posters predating 1923 are available for viewing and purchase at Zazzle.

Transnational Poster Art: Former East Germany (GDR) and Latin America, 1970–1989

Hoover Institution Archives Poster Collection, BL 2, BL 12

Posters from Hoover's collection were used by Stanford students to create this virtual exhibit.

Managing a Poster Collection

Susan Tschabrun. "Off the Wall and into a Drawer: Managing a Research Collection of Political Posters." American Archivist 66, (Fall/Winter 2003): 303-324.

Russian posters

Poster Collection, RU/SU 1437, Hoover Institution Archives.

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Close-up of "Through Polish Eyes" poster. UK 3412, Poster collection, Hoover Ins