UNC-Chapel Hill Yearbooks Online
Earlier this month I posted about Elon College’s online collection of yeabooks; in this post, I’d like to share the fact that UNC-Chapel Hill Library has a collection of their yearbooks, the Yackety Yack, online at the Internet Archive. Browsing through the yearbooks can be informative, seeing the pictures of the students and their class photos. The Yackety Yack has some interesting art in it as well.
Commencement Artwork from 1901 Yackety Yack
The oldest one currently on the site is the 1901 yearbook, the first issue with that name, previously, it was called the Hellenian. The senior class have a variety of information written about them, from their hometown to the activities & organizations in which they participate. I was pleasantly surprised too seeing early in the yearbook the name of a person in a family that I’ve been helping another researcher learn more about – the Picot’s of Washington & Halifax counties. On the Board of Trustees is listed Dr. Louis Julien Picot.
1901 UNC Board of Trustees
As is par for the course for texts at the Internet Archive, you can either browse these online or download them in a variety of file formats (even Kindle!).
The years of the Hellenian available include: 1890 | 1891 | 1892 | 1893 | 1894 | 1895 | 1896 | 1897 | 1898 | 1899 | 1900
The years of Yackety Yack include: 1901 | 1902 | 1903 | 1904 |1905 | 1906 | 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | 1911 | 1910 |1912 | 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920 | 1921 | 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925 | 1926 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934 | 1935 | 1936 | 1937 | 1938 |1939 | 1940 | 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 | 1946 | 1947 | 1948 | 1949 | 1950 | 1951 | 1952 | 1953 | 1954 | 1956 |1957 |1958 |1959 | 1960
Update: more years do indeed seem to be coming in since I originally posted. I’ll add links here as they become available: 1961 | 1962 | 1963
This collection represents just a small portion of the many books that UNC makes available at the Internet Archive. What started out as a one-year experiment seems to be going strong.
NC Newspaper Digitization Project
From a fellow researcher and the NC State Archives Blog today I learned that the efforts of their newspaper digitization project is now available online. For all of you NC researchers, you MUST go check this out! Historical newspapers can offer glimpses into your ancestors’ past lives that can be extremely enlightening.
The NC project was begun in 2007 and contains papers from 1752 to the 1890s. Some of the cities with coverage represented in their database include:
- Edenton (Chowan County) – 1787-1801
- Fayetteville (Cumberland County) – 1798-1795
- Hillsboro (Orange County) - 1786
- New Bern (Craven County) – 1751-1804
- Salisbury (Rowan County) – 1799-1898
- Wilmington (New Hanover County) - 1765-1816
The way the site is currently set up, it seems difficult to get an exact title list, but I will try to find out and share that information here. A big KUDOS to the State Archives for providing this very invaluable resource! Want to stay up-to-date with the goings on? You can follow the Twitter feed of the Information Management Specialist of the State Archives. Click on the image below
