Decades of UM Yearbooks Digitized, Available Online

Project preserves 116 years worth of publications for archives, research

Volumes of University of Mississippi yearbooks printed between 1897 and 2013 can be viewed online, thanks to a recent project that digitized the books for archival purposes.

The project originated with Kathryn Michaelis, former UM special collections digital initiatives librarian. She worked directly with the Lyrasis Digitization Collaborative, a Sloan Foundation grant-subsidized program that has made the process easy and affordable for libraries and cultural institutions across the country. Funding was also made possible by the Gerald Walton Endowment.

“We saw so many people coming through to look at the physical yearbooks, we thought this was a great idea,” said Jennifer Ford, head of archives and special collections and associate professor. “Through the collaborative partnership with the Internet Archive, all items were scanned from cover to cover and in full color.”

Viewers can choose from a variety of formats, page through a book choosing the “read online” option, download the PDF or search the full-text version.

Walton, UM provost emeritus and professor emeritus of English, said he supported the yearbook digitization project for several reasons.

“While I was working on a pictorial history of the university, I found our yearbooks to be by far my best resource and perused every one that had been published,” Walton said. “If I had been able to access them online, my work would have been much easier.

“The yearbooks are treasures for anyone doing serious research or for anyone just interested in seeing photos in the marvelous memory books. I cannot think of a more appropriate way to use endowment funds.”

Julia Rholes, professor and dean of university libraries, urges alumni, students and faculty to use the online versions.

“We’ve always had a lot of use of the print copies in Archives and Special Collections by these groups,” Rholes said. “The online version will be accessible for remote searching and will allow faster searching.”

To access these yearbooks from the catalog record, click here.