Remember Old Gold’s recent news about the online debut of the Daily Iowan Historic Newspapers Collection, part of the Iowa Digital Library? (In case not, here it is again: spectator.uiowa.edu/2011/december/oldgold.html.) Nearly every issue of the DI, dating back to its beginnings in 1868, is now online and searchable by date and text.

Well, the UI Libraries folks have done it again. In February they launched another online collection from the University Archives: the Hawkeye yearbook, chronicling a century of campus life at Iowa, 1892 to 1992. Go to digital.lib.uiowa.edu/yearbooks and start digging around the decade of your choice, or enter a name or term in the search box in the upper right corner. Old Gold found two images of a classmate from his hometown that way.

The Hawkeye was a project of the junior class from its inception until 1946, and each edition was named for the class based on its year of graduation. As a result, the yearbook titles for these years are a bit misleading. For example, the 1939 Hawkeye actually chronicles the 1937-38 school year. This was fixed in 1946 when Student Publications, Inc., publisher of the aforementioned Daily Iowan, took over production and began naming the annuals for the actual year covered. For example, the 1954 edition details the 1953-54 school year. An apparent lack of interest in the 1970s led to a five-year hiatus, but in 1978 production resumed, continuing until its final edition in 1992.

Paging through random editions turns up interesting insights and images. Page 104 of the 1960 annual, for example, features a photograph of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., visiting with members of the SUI School of Religion faculty during his November 1959 visit to campus. The inside front cover of the 1937 yearbook shows students walking through the Pentacrest along the east face of what is now MacLean Hall. The Engineering Building, with WSUI transmitting tower, is visible in the background.

As if the DI online weren’t enough, the new Hawkeye yearbook online collection gives Old Gold another reason to kill some extra time at the computer.

—David McCartney, University Archivist

1937, inside front cover [Yearbooks Collection (RG 02.10), University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries]

1960, page 104 [Yearbooks Collection (RG 02.10), University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries]

1959, front cover [Yearbooks Collection (RG 02.10), University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries]

1971, volume 2, page 199: Construction of the new music complex, as yet unnamed [Yearbooks Collection (RG 02.10), University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries]

1968, page 2 [Yearbooks Collection (RG 02.10), University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries]

1943, front cover [Yearbooks Collection (RG 02.10), University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries]