The USU Publicity Portraits collection consists of photographs of 681 different faculty members, students, staff, award recipients, and speakers (including Paul Newman, Jack Anderson, and James Stewart) at Utah State University. There are also 1,725 additional photographs that document different departments, activities, and research with the University. All of these photos were taken and collected for publicity reasons. Most of the photos are black and white and 4x5 inches or smaller. Often there are several images of each person. Included in the collection are five former Utah State University presidents (Franklin S. Harris, Glen L. Taggart, George Emert, Louis L. Madsen, and Stanford Cazier) and one former Utah governor (George Dewey Clyde).

Image captions were copied almost exactly from the descriptions on the original envelopes.