LaGrange College yearbooks, Viewbooks, Catalogs and Bulletins are available online at archive.org. The first yearbook, from 1914, was called The Sillabub. The next yearbook was not published until 1917, when it was renamed The Quadrangle. The last edition was published in 2009. Type LaGrange College and the year into the search bar.
Digitized issues of the student newspaper The Scroll, from 1922 until 1933, and reissued in 1958 as Hilltop News, up to and including 1974, can also be found below.
The following is an edited article from the LaGrange College website from July 7, 2014 titled "New project puts college history online."
Have you ever wondered what classes were offered at the LaGrange Female Institute (now LaGrange College) in 1848, or what the rules were for visiting off campus in 1932? (Hint: It involved a letter from parents to the president of the college). Charlene Baxter, Assistant Professor and Librarian for Public and Technical Services, said those, and many more, answers are readily available now, thanks to a digitization project at Lewis Library. The library worked with Lyrasis, a nonprofit library organization that coordinates projects around the Southeast, who secured a grant from the Alfred Sloan Foundation to help libraries digitize unique materials from their collections.
"The histories of colleges are important, not only to alumni, but to their families and historians as well," she said. "There is a push now for libraries to not only have their collections within the walls of their institutions, but to have them available online. Now researchers don't have to plan visits around our operating hours, and they don't have to worry about harming delicate materials."
Jacque Hornsby, Archives and Circulation Assistant, said the oldest digitized document is the catalog from 1848. "There may have been earlier catalogs, but they were lost when the academic building burned in 1860," she said. "The greatest gap in the catalogue holdings occurs from 1860 through 1876."
Baxter said these historical publications are invaluable. "They are a wonderful source of information for anyone who might be interested in women's studies, history, the history of education," she said. "You can follow the whole development of teacher training by looking at what courses were offered throughout the years and see how courses and requirements have changed."
Until the 1930s, the catalogs also contained a complete list of alumni. And until the 1940s, they also included a complete roster of each class. "Before the 1920s, LaGrange also included a preparatory school program, and had the equivalent of some high school classes," she said. "These documents are wonderful historical documents." The catalogs also served as public relations materials and an alumni bulletin. "They were mailed to a wide variety of people," she said. "They weren't just something that an incoming freshman would get. They had pictures that were meant to keep the alumni up to date, so they could be recruiters for the college."
The library's collection of digital yearbooks date from 1914. "The first issue was titled 'The Sillabub,' " Hornsby said. "It proved to be so expensive that the next issue did not appear until 1917. Renamed 'The Quadrangle,' it remained in publication through 2009." Also available are student handbooks from 1919 through 2012. As of that year, student handbooks were [no longer] published in hard copy. They are available digitally through the college's website. "[The Scroll] was the campus newspaper from 1922 until fall 1933, when it became the literary publication. Our collection of 'The Scroll' is fairly complete, but we always hope early issues will be located and donated to us. "
Missing are yearbooks for the years 1915, 1916, 1919, 1920, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1927, and 2002-2005. "We'd love to be able to add those publications," Hornsby said. "All we'd need to do is borrow them to have them scanned, and they then would be returned to the owners." The final part of the project involved the college newspaper, "The Hilltop News." "It is the college's most continuously published student newspaper," she said. "We have issues from 1958 through 1970. Beginning with 1973, significant gaps in the collection extend through the 1980s and 1990s. As always we are hoping that donations will fill in the gaps."
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