(Ted Rohde/Stars and Stripes)

October is American Archives Month! To celebrate, Stars and Stripes Archives and Library is sharing some “behind the scenes” images of Stripes’ operations, its staff and its archives throughout the paper’s eight decades of existence.

Griesheim, Germany, Feb. 12, 1960: Digitizing images from Stars and Stripes’ vast photo collections means we occasionally find shots at the end of a roll of film, or two entire rolls of film in this case, that don’t really belong with the rest of the assignment. This is one like that. Stars and Stripes photographers Gus Schuettler (left) and Gene Bane (right) make funny faces before fellow Stripes’ photographer Ted Rohde. Of the 31 images that were assigned number 03733A in the photo archives, 21 are of Schuettler and Bane clowning before the camera. We guess Schuettler needed to blow off some steam after completing the actual news assignment: photographing Elvis Presley catching a flight back to the United States at Rhein-Main airport. After two years of service — most of it served in Germany — Presley was transitioning out of the Army. Check out who else Schuettler managed to snap a photo of here.

Since 2004 the small (but mighty!) archives staff has worked to make more of our historic content available online. We have digitized our 1948-1999 European and Pacific editions, as well as several of our WWII editions and made them available online through http://starsandstripes.newspaperarchive.com/

In 2014 we focused our efforts on the preservation and digitization of our vast photo archives and have been slowly but steadily digitizing negatives, slides and prints — mainly concentrating on those with preservation issues.