If you have yearbooks from Chicago institutions that would add to the Chicago History Museum’s collection, please check the Yearbook Finding Aid for the school and the years. If we do not already have copies, then you can fill out the Online Collection Donation Form.
More information can be found on the Collections Donations page.
Related collections include:
Higher education grew in popularity as grade schools, technical and vocational schools, and colleges and universities used yearbooks and publications to share information about their programs, faculty and instructors, and school achievements.
At the same time, yearbooks were increasingly viewed as keepsake items for students. Dedication statements at the beginning of books included references to the student as a future reader, remembering their experiences. Yearbook editors began including designated pages for autographs.
The events of World War I impacted schools, colleges, and universities. Yearbooks documented school contributions to the war effort, such as fundraising and supply drives. Many schools implemented military training programs that continued after the war. Schools included photographs of uniformed students marching, training, and practicing drills.
Photographs are in black and white, and graphics are predominately in black and white. Some institutions included a color or two when printing the title page or section pages.
Group photographs of teachers and staff, grade levels and classroom groups, and student organizations and athletic teams remained popular.
Not all photographs included captions. Group photographs might have no caption or provide a list of last names adjacent to the image without identifying individuals. It was not until the late 1920s that it became more common for yearbook editors to identify people by row within captions. However, they often included initials instead of full names.
The inclusion of candid photography steadily increased within the means of the institution. It became common for yearbooks to feature a few montage pages of candid, informal, or action photographs from the academic year. Yearbook staff took pictures around the school campus or buildings during student outings, social events, or athletic games.
Some yearbook editorial groups embellished the montage pages by adding writing or drawings on the photographs, such as nicknames, Greek letters for the student's fraternity or sorority, references to group jokes, or other designs.
As an indication of the growing personal nature of yearbooks, some schools with smaller class sizes included baby pictures of teachers and staff or of graduating seniors. The baby-page feature appeared as a comparison to the person's current photograph or in place of a recent photo as a way for the reader to guess the identity based upon descriptive clues.
Yearbooks from 1911 to 1930 often include:
Students continued to use long- and short-form writing and hand-drawn illustrations to capture their experiences and memories of school. Yearbooks included a range of short narratives, testimonials, poems, rhymes, jokes, plays, satires, created dialogues, and cartoons and sketches. Humorous sections like "grinds," "dictionary," or "alphabet," and sections with inside jokes and nicknames in a "class chart" or "student table" also maintained popularity.
Information about individual students differs between schools, especially grade school and college levels, and depends on the year. Some books list only a student's name. Then to varying degrees, schools might also include information about the student's character or academic disposition, involvement with clubs or athletic teams, and student offices held while at school.
High schools might include a directory listing student names and addresses.
Seniors or upper classes received more coverage than lower classes with larger photographs, longer character descriptions or quotes, or lists of the student's academic and extracurricular activities.
Some yearbooks only include information about the graduating students and no information about other seniors or lower classes.
Many of the section title pages and illustrations continued to be drawn by students, reflecting the changes in design aesthetics.
Some schools began incorporating one or two colors when printing the title page or section pages.
A section for faculty and peer autographs and personal notes began to appear in some yearbooks from high schools or colleges with smaller class sizes.
Many schools had literary publication departments that produced weekly or monthly periodicals. Some schools participated in a publication exchange to connect with other educational institutions around the state and country. Schools would send copies of their publications to each other and exchange feedback, sometimes quoting the responses in the yearbook's literary section. This process helped share ideas about what students and public readers found interesting.
Alum sections were still included in some yearbooks, particularly in institutions with strong fraternity and sorority organizations.
Advertisements or sponsor pages appeared at the end of many yearbooks. Students and other readers were encouraged to patronize the businesses and services.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many schools admitted students twice a year. Students could begin in the fall or spring semester, and the school held graduation twice a year, winter and summer. This admission schedule means that yearbooks from this time might have multiple sections of seniors, possibly two sections of graduating seniors, and the senior students still taking classes.
Some schools only published yearbooks for graduating students.
In the catalog and finding aid, a one-half fraction after the year designates a mid- or half-year publication, such as "1916 ½."
Since individual schools set admission schedules, some schools published books with February and June graduates from the same calendar year, and others published with June and February graduates from consecutive calendar years. If the school and years you are looking for include a ½ fraction, keep search years flexible and include a year before or after to account for when a student or graduate might be listed.
It was not until around the 1970s that most Chicago grade and high schools solidified a primary enrollment date in the fall and held a single graduation at the beginning of summer. However, colleges and universities still admitted students on a rolling basis.