As the Illinois State University Alumni Association approaches its sesquicentennial celebration, Milner Library is delighted to announce that it has fully digitized its comprehensive collection of alumni and marketing periodicals.
First published in February 1912, The Alumni Quarterly of Illinois State Normal University was the first of many periodicals which sought to keep both alumni and the public informed about university happenings. Each issue’s contents covered a broad spectrum of campus advancements to provide a kaleidoscopic view of academic life at ISU. In addition, it provided updates on the personal lives of former Redbirds in the Alumni News Exchange section, giving alums the opportunity to write in and announce major achievements.
In 1967, after 55 years of following the same format, a shift of focus occurred. Alumni Quarterly’s successor publication, The Register (1966-1974), privileged more public relations stories, while content dedicated to alumni was included as a supplement called Alumni Register. This shift marks the beginning of many changes the previously primarily alumni-focused periodicals underwent. Thereafter, new publicity-focused publications included ISU Life (1974-1987) and ISU Today (1983-1999), while Alumni News (1974-1983) targeted stories of interest to alumni specifically. The two foci merged back into one eponymous periodical which was originally titled Illinois State: For Alumni of Illinois State University, in 1999. The title changed to Illinois State Alumni Magazine in 2003 and again to simply Illinois State in 2011.
The availability of these volumes is thanks to the hard work of the folks at Milner Library’s Digitization Center, especially Tiffany Fenner, a student employee assigned to this project. Her one-and-a-half years’ work included scanning 11,592 pages across 494 issues of printed material. Many of these issues’ bindings were beginning to fall apart, requiring preservation work. As a result, some particularly worn issues needed to be disbound so that the individual pages’ contents could be accurately captured. Though fragile, the volumes were handled with great care and have been successfully digitized.
With 110 years of material to look through, each issue contains valuable insight into the evolving sociopolitical landscape of the country. One alumni magazine, The Statesman, ran for just four issues between 1969 and 1971. It offers great insight into views on the Vietnam War, race relations on campus, marijuana, and other markedly countercultural perspectives of the era. One issue, vol. 2 no. 1, is missing from University Archives‘ collection and has yet to be located. Information regarding its whereabouts can be directed to Digitization Coordinator Karmine Beecroft.
Issues circulating around war times show how our school was affected: a copy of Alumni Quarterly from 1918 recounts how the lack of male students caused university funding in athletics to be cut 50%. Issues from November 1941 onward include a section dedicated to letters sent from ISNU students and alumni currently enlisted. It also gives us a look into how the English language developed. The earliest issues of Alumni Quarterly adhere to spelling standards suggested by the Simplified Spelling Board, spelling words with silent letters like ‘enough’ and ‘building’ instead as ‘enuf’ and ‘bilding,’ among other reformations. This convention continued until their 1919 issue, one year before the Board’s dissolution.
