SLIPPERY ROCK — Usually, the only places one can access old yearbooks are from a library or, for alumni, by rummaging through storage bins in the attic or at a flea market.

That will soon change at Slippery Rock University’s Bailey Library.

The library’s staff plans to digitize the entire collection of the Saxigena, SRU’s former yearbook, and make it available online by the end of the spring 2020 semester.

The Saxigena-published yearbooks ran from 1911 to 1997, again in 2005 and 2006, and returned in a digital form in 2007 before it was permanently discontinued.

While there are already 13 volumes available on the library’s digital collections webpage from a previous digitization project, the remaining 80 editions will be added this spring.

“Yearbooks are the memory books of the institution, providing a record of everything that was going on each year at the university,” said Judy Silva, associate professor of library and university archivist.

Silva said the digital copies provide more benefit than only nostalgia-quenching items.

“It’s not just the photos of women with bouffant hair, but it’s a research tool and you can look back year-by-year and see how things change and people come and go,” she said. “It’s all the things that reflect the era, even the graphic design and the typefaces.”

The project to digitize the entire collection involves the contributions of faculty, staff and student workers from Bailey Library’s Archives and Special Collections departments, as well as funding from the SRU Alumni Association.

“People love to take a walk down memory lane, and this is a great opportunity to share this collective experience with more alumni,” said Kelly Bailey, director of alumni engagement.

Bailey shared the proposal with the Alumni Association, which then voted to fund the project.

“It’s fun for people to pull up a yearbook and reminisce about their time at SRU, and hopefully that will lead to them coming back to campus and further engaging with the university,” Bailey said.

Silva and library technicians Kevin McLatchy and Jared Negley are also excited about having yearbooks available online as a teaching resource for students.

“Students who come to the library to use them as a primary source can still hold (a yearbook) in their hands, see it, feel it and smell it, but (after the digitization project is complete) they can then go back to their rooms, the Smith Student Center or wherever and continue doing research online,” Silva said.

In addition to scanning the yearbooks into a digital format, the online copies also feature searchable keywords and a virtual chapter system, so yearbooks can be more easily navigated.

The yearbooks are digitized off campus by a third-party vendor, Backstage Library Works, which prepares the files and loads them into software, so they can be displayed on SRU’s digital collections webpage.

Recent advances in scanning technology has made the process more efficient as well.

McLatchy said like anything else, print has fallen out of favor, including with yearbooks. He said by digitizing them, it keeps the tradition of yearbooks alive.

“It’s a sign of the times,” McLatchy said. “People now rely on websites and social media as ways of expressing and experiencing current student life. Perhaps, by moving the yearbook collection online people will recognize the importance of preserving the past and recording what the university is like now for future generations.”

To view editions of the Saxigena that have already been digitized, visit Slippery Rock University’s website.