Jessy Randall, CC archivist and curator of special collections at Tutt Library, reports that digital versions of all the CC yearbooks are now available online at http://archive.org/details/coloradocollege. The full text of each yearbook is searchable, so it’s easy to find embarrassing photos of yourself and your friends! Additionally, the library has digitized some of the early CC student newspapers, and hopes to do more, if the budget allows.

The process of digitization began in the summer of 2012, when the library received word that Lyrasis, a library services cooperative, was providing subsidized digitization to its members using grant money from the Sloan Foundation. This has allowed libraries across the country to digitize historical materials at the significantly reduced rate of less than 10 cents per page.

Tutt Library quickly put together a shipment containing CC yearbooks covering school years 1899-2007 – in other words, every CC yearbook ever published. There was no yearbook in the earliest years of the college, and the publication has been on hiatus since the spring of 2007. In a few short weeks, Lyrasis completed the digitization and uploaded the files to the Internet archives.

Since the grant money hadn’t yet run out and the discount was still available, the library then digitized all the smaller-format CC student newspapers. (Larger-size items didn’t qualify for the discount.) This means that the CC Tiger for 1899-1912 and 1929-1937 are now available.

In the coming year, Randall plans to capture all files from the Internet archives so that they also live on CC’s digital archives (http://dacc.coalliance.org/), making them available for generations to come.