The Dean C. Worcester Collection consists of more than 4700 glass plate photographic negatives and prints taken in the Philippines between 1890 and 1913, by Dean C. Worcester and colleagues. Worcester first traveled to the Philippines with UM zoologist Joseph Beal Steere in 1887, while still a University of Michigan undergraduate. After the Philippines became a U.S. colony in 1898, Worcester was appointed Secretary of the Interior of the colonial government (1901-1913) and remained in the Philippines until his death in 1924. As a strong advocate of U.S. colonialism, Worcester was a controversial figure even in his own time and his legacy remains much debated. Nonetheless, he was critical to initiating UMMA's long relation with Philippine archaeology and anthropology, inviting Carl Guthe to come to the region to begin archaeological work that became the basis of the museum's Guthe Collection. Worcester was also an avid photographer, and he and his staff took nearly 16,000 photographs between 1890 and 1913—documenting indigenous Philippine communities and traditional lifeways as well as activities of the colonial administration. A total of 4775 original glass plate negatives from the Worcester archives are held by UMMA (the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago also houses a large collection of Worcester negatives and photographs), nearly 1200 of which have been published on CD-ROM by the Museum's Publication division.