"People Still Feed the Squirrels"
The University Archives and Historical Collections digitized the yearbook for historical and accessibility purposes.
Yearbooks can be found throughout campus, whether that be the most current edition available for pick up in different buildings or historic volumes in the Red Cedar Log office or the library. These books only exist in print form, however, with very limited information online. The University Archives and Historical Collections, in collaboration with the MSU Libraries, started a fundraising campaign to help digitize the yearbook, a much needed advancement for both historical research and accessibility.
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In the basement of Wells Hall, lined with brown boxes of archival material, the first step of the digitization process was underway. Rebecca Yeomans-Stephenson, a fourth-year student majoring in history who works in the University Archives, helped to prepare the piles of books.
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Fourth-year student and Archives employee Rebecca Yeomans-Stephenson looks through an old edition of the Red Cedar Log with Acting Records Manager Jennie Rankin before packing the book away.
“Right now we are in the process of packing up all of these yearbooks to be shipped to Pennsylvania where they are going to be digitized,” she said. “To do that, we have to wrap them in bubble wrap, because they are very fragile, especially some of the older ones, and we want to make sure they do not get harmed on the way there.”
The yearbook first manifested as class albums around 1877 and as a more conventional yearbook in 1887. Once digitized, each individual page of the yearbooks from the last century and a half will be available online, allowing researchers interested in campus culture, student life and athletics to access an important primary source.
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From 1910 to 1975, the yearbook was consistently called the Wolverine. The book changed to the Red Cedar Log in 1976 and has kept the title since.
“The most we have on the regular student is they might be in the yearbook, student directory and commencement program,” said Jennie Rankin, the acting records manager for the Archives. “That’s about the only place we are going to find their names.”
According to Rankin, genealogy is one of the best resources the yearbook provides.
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“I was able to go back and find my grandma in the yearbook and I thought that was really cool,” Yeomans-Stephenson said. “I was able to go back and find my family history when my family was here.”
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Beyond family histories, the yearbook provides a unique look into what student life was like in different eras on campus.
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“What were people doing in the ‘70s? Well if you look now to then, not much has changed, it is still pretty similar,” said Rankin. “People still feed the squirrels.”
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Yeomans-Stephenson added that in her experience looking through the books, they are reflections of the time period and current events.
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“Our COVID book is very representative of what was happening during COVID,” she said. “For different researchers looking at different eras, it's really easy to use them as a source, because you have direct context from students, you have quotes, you have pictures, you have a lot of information.”
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The yearbooks themselves have an interesting history. The books have been titled the Harrow, the Wolverine and finally the Red Cedar Log since 1976. In 1978, two yearbooks were produced; one for seniors and one for freshmen. At the moment, one of the only complete sets of yearbooks is housed in Conrad Hall, home to the University Archives.
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“There are some yearbooks we only have a single copy, or people have ripped pages out of or they have stolen copies,” said Emily Cordes, the assistant director of development for the MSU Libraries, who was involved with the project fundraising efforts.
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One of the most stolen books is from 1979 where Earvin “Magic” Johnson is prominently featured.
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With fragile, older books and concerns over available copies, digitizing the yearbooks not only ensured that the information encapsulated in the books were preserved, but also allowed anyone to access them. According to Cordes, many of the people who donated were alumni who were interested in revisiting their time at MSU.
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“The goal is that ultimately we'll be able to do accessibility remediation, which means going through and making sure all of the PDFs are keyword searchable so that there is all the metadata,” said Cordes. “People could go and click on the approximate year and search for a last name rather than flip through every page or search for a certain event and that will be probably a multi-year process.”
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Quintessential MSU experiences and traditions such as feeding or taking pictures of the squirrels may not change throughout the years, but the people who attended Michigan State and what they did during that time, are worth documenting and preserving for future memories and research.
Published in the Red Cedar Log, Volume 134, pages 32-33
Photos and content by Katherine Denzin for the Red Cedar Log
Yeomans-Stephenson helped start the yearbook digitization process by bubble wrapping the books so they would not get damaged in the mail. The older books especially are fragile since they date as far back as 1877.