HIGH SCHOOL YEARBOOKS

Library Administrator's Digest, Dec 2003

Got a patron who needs local sports statistics from the 1950s? Old pictures? Period dress and hair style information? You can search historical reference books, microfilmed newspapers and databases, but your most successful - and unexpected - source for local timelines and events might be high school yearbooks.

More than 100 years' worth of Springfield public school yearbooks are housed in compact shelving among the rare book collection in the local history department at the Library Center. A few yearbooks from Greenwood, Springfield Catholic, Republic, Willard and Ash Grove high schools are also available. The yearbooks, considered "rare," cannot be checked out.

Local history associate Sharol Neely says patrons access the yearbook collection for a variety of reasons. "Sometimes they are working on reunions, sometimes it is people, especially adoptees, looking for family members," she said.

"When I started here 20 years ago, I had a gentleman come in who had driven from west Texas to look at some Central High School yearbooks. His parents had divorced before he was born and he had never seen his father, until we found him in the yearbook. It was so exciting and emotional to be able to help him see his father for the very first time."

Police have used the yearbooks for legal reasons, students have used them to research clothing and sports, people have come in to look at them and reminisce. They have been used in scavenger hunts, and once, a local disc jockey referenced the books for trivia questions.

"When Brad Pitt first became famous, there was always a run on looking at his high school pictures," Sharol said. "We had a group of reporters from England come in to take a look."

Curt Witcher, president of the National Genealogical Society, recently wrote that directories and annuals of all types are important research sources and will likely become dramatically more valuable with the passage of time.

Libewire, Springfield-Greene County (MO) Library District, November 2003