Yahoo for Yearbooks
Searching for long-lost Aggie history is easier than ever now that the Texas A&M University Yearbook Collection is online.
The free digital archive, produced by the Texas A&M University Libraries, enables users to explore the university’s history page-by-page or with keyword searches, such as names of people and organizations. Each page of every yearbook was scanned using optical character recognition software and the Internet Archive BookReader.
“By digitizing the yearbooks, we are providing access to a source of Texas A&M history widely requested by our patrons,” said Greg Bailey, university archivist. “This allows us to reach a greater number of former students and their families as they look to research their time at Texas A&M.”
With the exception of the four most recent years, the digital collection contains every Texas A&M yearbook produced, beginning with the first edition published in 1895 under the name Olio. The second yearbook was not published until 1903 under the new name The Longhorn and in 1949, the student body renamed the yearbook to the Aggieland.
The 1949 Aggieland editors addressed the name change in the first volume by stating, “This book is essentially the same as the many Longhorns that have preceded it, but it carries the name, you, the student body, chose to give to your yearbook.”
The libraries’ digitization efforts are part of an ongoing initiative to make more digital collection resources at Cushing Memorial Library and Archives available to the public for free. Funding for the yearbook collection archive was provided by the Class of 1949.
Visit library.tamu.edu/yearbooks to view the collection.
To support future digitization projects and the University Libraries, contact Adelle Hedleston ’88 at adelle-h@library.tamu.edu or (979) 862-4574.