Champaign-Urbana Yearbooks
Champaign-Urbana Digital Yearbooks
In Summer 2011 high school students from Champaign Central, Champaign Centennial and Urbana High digitized Champaign-Urbana High School Yearbooks. This page serves both as an introduction to the project and as an entry-point to the digitized yearbooks. Below is an up-to-date listing of which yearbooks have been digitized and are available online, as well as links to access the digitized yearbooks.
Launch your own yearbook digitization project - check out the eBlackCU Manual and Video Tutorial .
For more on the project see the News-Gazette Story published June 27, 2011.
There are four main ways to access the digitized yearbooks:
1) Click on image thumbnails [Thumbnails are small versions of larger images]. Each page of each yearbook is available as a JPEG. Just click on the thumbnail for a page and a large version of the page will open in your browser.
2) Download the whole yearbook. Each yearbook is available as a complete pdf. Find the pdf files on the yearbook pages, they should have file names such as Rosemary-1963-low-res.pdf, download them, and you will have your own digital yearbook you can do with as you wish.
3) Scroll through the yearbook online. We are currently experimenting with ways to allow you to scroll page-by-page through the yearbooks online without having to download the whole yearbook. Go to the bottom of the yearbook page and you will see a preview screen that allows you to scroll through the yearbooks.
4) Search for someone by name. There are two ways to search the yearbooks for a specific individual you are looking for:
4a) Use the Google search bar at the top of this screen to search for a specific individual in the digital yearbooks
4b) Use the Champaign County Historical Archives, Urbana Free Library, Local History Online Database to search for the names of specific individuals. Once you know the page and year in which the person you are looking for appears in the yearbooks you can come back to eBlackCU to locate the right pages. [NOTE: The Archives has not indexed all yearbooks. If you notice a yearbook that has not been indexed feel free to volunteer to index it! In order for this project to be a success we need everyone uploading as well as downloading!]
Also please see the following short documentary on how to access C-U Yearbooks produced by Summer 2011 eBlackCU Spiders.
In addition to accessing the yearbooks please give us feedback about what this project means to you, what you have learned, and what isn't working. To comment on the project you can:
1) Use the comment boxes at the bottom of each digital yearbook page.
2) Use the contact form to send us a message.
3) Use the contribution form to add a memory or a digital file that this project inspired you to contribute.
Note that some digital yearbooks are incomplete. In some cases photographs or pages of the yearbooks had been torn out before we began the project. In other cases, we may have missed a portion of a page while digitizing it. If you notice any missing information in the digital yearbooks please contact us so that we can fix it!
For more information on why we are doing this project please read our Community Technology Manifesto.
We are also releasing a manual and video tutorial later this Summer to assist interested individuals in launching their own digital history project. Check back in late August 2011 for more information.
Everyone is welcome to join in this effort!
Directory of Champaign-Urbana Digitized Yearbooks:
Champaign Centennial High School (formerly Senior High Annex)
Champaign Central High School (formerly Champaign Senior High School)
Urbana High School