Bowling Green, Ky. - If a college yearbook is like a time capsule, then nearly a century of WKU’s culture will be soon available with the click of a mouse.

Within the next year, 77 volumes of the Talisman, Western Kentucky University’s yearbook, will be accessible online at www.wku.edu/talisman/Archives.html.

The site already has 18 downloadable Talismans from five decades as well as a copy of The Vista, Western Kentucky State Normal School’s first yearbook published in 1915, and a 1956 copy of Towers, Bowling Green Business University’s yearbook.

“Eventually, all yearbooks that we have access to from all of Western’s schools will be on the site,” said Sue Lynn McDaniel, University Archivist in the Kentucky Library and Museum.

The timing of this project is especially meaningful to Bob Adams and Jackie Bretz, Talisman co-advisers.

“We were in the discussion phase of contracting with an outside vendor to scan the Talisman pages, available to others for about $7 per download. This way, free, is much better,” Bretz said.

“Being able to view and print pages from all the Talismans without charge is a generous public service. We are thrilled that people will visit our site to see past and present Talisman pages.”

Adams said electronic access to the Talisman is another benefit of WKU’s Centennial celebration.

“We can’t thank the people involved enough for undertaking this massive project,” Adams said. “It has taken cooperation from a number of offices across campus to make it happen.”

Yearbooks are quite different from university historical documents, which present campus life the way the administration hoped it would be.

“Because student publications are created by students, they tell you what it was really like from the students’ point of view,” McDaniel said.

Students often look through the Talismans, searching for examples of clothes, hair and trends when they are working on floats or exhibits for school or social projects, McDaniel said.

The current Talisman editor, Katie Clark, a senior from Bowling Green, said she thinks the value of having the Talisman archives available online is that “it’s a resource for everyone, not just Western students. If you look through the yearbooks, you can get a realistic view of what it was like to be a student on the Hill.”

Last fall, while McDaniel and Kathy Barnes, an Academic Technology graphic artist, were working on another project together, the topic of making the yearbooks available online came up.

McDaniel asked Barnes whether it could be done.

“I told Sue Lynn yes — we could do it a little at a time,” Barnes said.

Barnes has several student employees who supervise computer labs. These workers are the ones scanning in the yearbook pages, one page at a time, during their spare time from other duties.

It’s an overwhelming undertaking, considering each yearbook will require approximately 12 hours each to scan, build into an e-book and load onto the server, Barnes said.

Will it be worth it?

“People who are curious about their family will use this site a lot,” Barnes said.
Genealogists, historians, archivists and academic historians will be among the first and most frequent visitors to the Talisman archives page, not to mention WKU alumni.

“Individuals through the years have requested a copy of the yearbooks from while they were here,” McDaniel said. “Having access online will be even better than getting them copies.”

Golden anniversary reunions are the classes most likely to request yearbooks.

“Oftentimes, the yearbook photo is the only one they had taken as a young person,” she said.

The Talisman archives are a joint project of the offices of University Archives, Kentucky Library and Museum, Academic Technology, Information Technology and the Talisman.

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For information, contact Jackie Bretz at (270) 745-6407.

-WKU-
"A leading American university with international reach"

Office of Media Relations
Western Kentucky University
1906 College Heights Blvd., Bowling Green, Ky. 42101-3576
Phone: (270)745-4295 - Fax: (270)7455387 - E-Mail: western@wku.edu