Kennesaw State’s yearbook collection was recently made digitally available through KSU Archives’ Scholarly Online Access Repository.
Digital Archivist Alissa Helms said that KSU Archives wanted to make the yearbook collection available for all students, faculty and staff to access online through SOAR.
SOAR is a resource provided through KSU’s library system that “offers on-demand access to digital materials, both born-digital and analog-to-digital conversions, from the collections of the Archives,” according to KSU’s website. The KSU community can also use SOAR’s online channel to transfer digital files directly into the archives.
The collection includes approximately 30 yearbooks, the oldest being from 1967 — one year after KSU, then-called Kennesaw Junior College, opened its doors to students, according to an archived webpage on KSU’s website from 2011. The yearbooks range all the way up to 1995, showing the KSU’s progression from a junior college to a university.
“We decided to put them online because it’s a fan favorite,” Helms said. “A lot of people want to go back and look at their yearbooks, and maybe they don’t have them anymore.”
The online accessibility also benefits other departments at KSU that occasionally request images or other historical information from KSU Archives.
“We may not necessarily have that in other collections, but it’s recorded in yearbooks, so it’s a good source of information to have out there online for people to look up,” Helms explained.
The collection documents KSU’s transition from a college to a four-year university. Helms said that the yearbook montage reflects the increase of sports teams, the formation of Greek life and the continuous development of student organizations.
Helms said that the Archives uploaded a few images from past yearbooks on social media and saw a positive response from the Kennesaw community online.
When Kennesaw Junior College opened in 1966, Horace W. Sturgis, the namesake of the Kennesaw campus library, became the college’s first president. He led the college to success and to its transition into a four-year institution in 1976, according to KSU’s website.
Sturgis awarded the first bachelor’s degrees at Kennesaw College during his last commencement ceremony as president in 1980.
Betty L. Siegel, the namesake of the student recreation center on the Kennesaw campus, later took over as the first female president of Kennesaw College in 1981, according to the archived webpage from 2011. The college finally gained university status in 1996, earning the name Kennesaw State University.
For more information on KSU’s history, visit KSU’s archives through the university’s library system.
