What picture comes to mind when you
think about your grandparents? Your parents?
For your entire life, you’ve known them as
adults, doing adult things. But we forget
that they were once teens and young adults
too! Finding a picture and / or information
about your grandparents or parents from
their formative years can be a very
rewarding addition to anyone’s family
history research.
High school, college and other
miscellaneous school yearbooks or class
lists can be an interesting source of
genealogical information and photographs.
You might find out that your relative
participated in sports, scholastic teams,
won academic awards, was a class officer,
etc. Maybe your relative’s subsequent
vocation or avocation goes back to when they
were a member of the Biology Club, Drama
Club, or school orchestra? Wouldn’t it be
fun to be able to add a picture of Grandma
Ruth when she was a member of her school
chorus?
The JGSLI Board decided that it would be
a valuable service to its members if we
could inventory yearbooks in our members’
personal libraries and make that information
available for genealogical look-ups. JGSLI
commenced its Yearbook Project in June of
2006 with the goal of acting as an
intermediary to match researchers with
yearbook owners.
During the last year, we have been able
to match dozens of researchers with yearbook
owners. Since our
list of yearbooks was made public, we
have received inquiries from not only our
members, but non-members as well. We
realized that since our membership’s
yearbooks are predominantly from the New
York City / Long Island area, the
information in those books could be of
interest to researchers from around the
country.
The interest from non-members outside of
the NYC / LI area gave us the idea of
expanding our project to inventory yearbooks
from other local JGSs, other genealogical
groups and other interested individuals. A
number of non-member researchers have
inquired if they could list their books on
our site as well.
JGSLI’s Role
JGSLI does not own, nor do we have
physically custody of, the yearbooks listed
on our site at
www.jgsli.org/yearbook_list.htm. The
books are in the personal libraries of those
that are making them available for
genealogical look-ups. JGSLI will act as the
“matchmaker” between the owner of the
information and the researcher. When a
request comes to us, using the email address
“yearbook_project@jgsli.org.”
We will reply to the researcher and forward
the request to the owner of the book using a
blind cc. It is up to the owner of the
material to comply with the request. (People
signing up for the program do so with the
understanding that there will be requests.
See Owner’s Role below.)
Owner’s Role
The owner of the material submits a signed
JGSLI Yearbook Project Form which can be
downloaded from our site. The agreement
states, in part, “Submitting a listing means
that you have volunteered to be contacted by
email and are willing to provide
information, a photocopy, or scan for the
researcher. JGSLI is only making the
information available to researchers. Owners
of the books are responsible for following
up with the request.”
Researcher’s Role
Researchers can contact us through the email
address
yearbook_project@jgsli.org. We would
appreciate if requesters of information also
become providers of information to help
fellow researchers.
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