For your viewing enjoyment, head on over to the University Archives Digital Collections and check out some new material! In addition to photographs, commencement programs, student newspapers, and The Cupola, the Law School yearbooks, LYTAE, are being added. While there are only two available so far, the collection will be growing, so check back frequently. And if you’re interested in the years 1976 and 1977, you’re in luck! Those are the earliest ones, and the first that have been made available.

And while you’re browsing, be sure to check out the photograph collection, which has been updated with loads of new material!

Happy browsing!

…was the card catalog! The OPAC, or the Online Public Access Catalog, is what we all know and love (and depend on!) today to find everything that lives in the library. The online catalog of books, films, equipment, and more, keeps track of every physical thing in the library, and makes the collection accessible to all who need it. You hop on a your phone, tablet, laptop (pick a screen, any screen, any screen you like), go to the library’s homepage, and throw a title or just a word into a box to find what you need.

Before technology allowed for things such as the OPAC to exist, librarians still managed to find a way to both keep track of, and make accessible, the library’s collection. Using the card catalog, librarians created multiple access points to books and other material in the library. A single book would have many cards on file associated with it, therefore if you only knew the author, for example, or just knew the subject matter you wanted to research, you would find the book or books you needed.

Many readers may be familiar with card catalogs, but it is likely that most current students who use the library today aren’t. So here are some great pictures of the library in the card catalog days!

Students look for books in the card catalog at Churchill Library, circa 1970s

A librarian sets up the card catalog for the new D’Amour Library, 1983

Card catalogs set up and being used in D’Amour Library, circa 1980s