The photographic collections held by the Library-Archives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints consist of approximately 100,000 items in about 700 separate collections. This vast resource, which is used to document and illustrate the story of the Mormon Church and its people, poses problems of arranging, describing, cataloging, use, and preservation. These problems have been attacked in a comprehensive system, described below, which might find a place in other repositories with large collections of photographs. The objective of the system is to provide a low -cost method of making the photographs easily available to research, while, at the same time, eliminating excessive handling of the archival prints. A two-pronged approach is used: first, a finding aid system, based heavily on archival practices, but using, as well, library cataloging techniques; and second, a miniature visual shelf list, which serves as a surrogate for the archival print, the use of which reduces the handling of the original. The finding aids are a reflection of the arrangement of the photographs. The photographs are arranged by collection. The term is applied to photographs in the same way it is applied to manuscripts or papers. A collection may be either a body of photographs having a common source, usually a photographer or collector; or an artificial accumulation devoted to a common theme. The principle of provenance is applied to photographs, whenever possible, for the same reasons it is applied to records and papers. Many of the collections are the work of pioneer Utah photographers, or of twentieth-century LDS Church administrative departments. Each individual photograph, in addition to its informational and illustrative value, becomes more important by its context. Since all of the photographs are in collections, the collection level is the fundamental level at which photographs are described. A set of catalog cards is made for each collection, with entries for photographer, collector, and subjects. These cards are interfiled in a dictionary card catalog with entries for archival and manuscript material. In many cases the card adequately describes the collection; in others, additional finding aids are required. The catalog card, then, refers the user to a register or calendar, which lists the photographs folder-by-folder or item-by-item as appropriate. In some few cases, individual items within collections are separately cataloged with analytical cards. And, in addition to the entries in the card catalog, a separate simple portrait index is maintained. It includes entries for people who appear in the photograph, with only their name and the call number. The emphasis, however, is at the collection level;