University of Scranton Commencement Programs

Commencement Programs

The Weinberg Memorial Library is excited to announce our newest digital collection – University of Scranton Commencement Programs – which includes programs from commencement exercises and related activities (like Class Night and Baccalaureate) held by the University of Scranton and its predecessor, St. Thomas College. Dated from the 1910s through the 1970s, the programs generally list names, degrees, and awards received by that year’s graduating class. Some programs also include biographies of honorary degree recipients.

We’re still working on digitizing programs from the 1970s to the present – but due to privacy restrictions related to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), we are unable to provide public access to programs dated after August 1974 that include student names. (For more information regarding FERPA, please contact the Office of the Registrar.) The original, printed programs are still available in the Library’s Special Collections and University Archives, where they may be viewed by appointment.

We hope that the collection will interest our alumni as well as our current students, faculty, staff, and friends.  Please let us know at digitalcollections@scranton.edu if you have questions or suggestions for us, and make sure you take a second to browse through our other digital collections.

University of Scranton Course Catalogs 1926-2008, now Online

Digitization of special collections is ongoing at the Weinberg Memorial Library, and as a result we’re happy to have one more digital collection available for public use this Spring.

Now online and fully searchable is the University of Scranton Course Catalogs collection, which includes 123 St. Thomas College and University of Scranton undergraduate and graduate course catalogs from 1926 through 2008.  These catalogs will be useful not only for former students seeking course descriptions, but also for local historians and genealogists interested in the University’s history.

University course catalogs from 2007 and earlier were digitized in 2009 by Internet Archive as part of the Lyrasis Mass Digitization Collaborative, a group effort to digitize cultural heritage materials in which the Weinberg Memorial Library has participated since the Fall of 2008.  Each catalog was digitized in full color at 400 dpi, and each image was preserved in JPEG2000 format.  In order to save on server space and make the catalog images faster to download, we’ve uploaded PDF derivatives of those master JPEG2000s into our CONTENTdm collection.  As a result, some of the photographs in the catalogs may appear blurred.  If you’d like a higher resolution copy of a catalog, you can download the original JPEG2000s from Internet Archive by clicking on the Internet Archive URL, stored in each catalog’s “document description.”  And of course, the original printed catalogs are still available in the Library’s University Archives and can be viewed by appointment.

Catalogs from after 2007 are born digital documents, which we’ve downloaded for preservation from University Catalogs web site.

If you have questions about the course catalog collection or about the digitization process, please contact the Digital Services department.  And don’t forget to take a look at our other recent digital collections!

UofS Football Archives now online

The University of Scranton’s football team may no longer be around (in fact, it’s famous on campus for being “undefeated since 1960”), but at the Weinberg Memorial Library, UofS football is back in a big way.  This week, the Library is proud to announce the University of Scranton Football Collection, a digitized version of our football archives.

The collection includes over a thousand photographs of University of Scranton (and St. Thomas College) football teams, players, coaches, and games – as well as photos of the cheerleaders and marching bands who cheered them on.  The collection also features a set of football game programs.  The programs, produced for each home game, have team rosters, statistics, and game analysis.  Most of the materials come from the years 1900 through 1960, when the varsity football team was disbanded.

This collection isn’t just for UofS football fans, though.  The game programs in particular are a rich resource for researchers interested in the history of Scranton and its surrounding area.  The programs were sponsored by local businesses (like the Hotel Casey), so the booklets serve as miniature “time capsules” showing slices of Scranton life over time.

We invite all students, staff, alumni, and community members to browse and search the collection at www.scranton.edu/library/football.  You may also want to take a look at our brief history of University of Scranton football.

P.S. While we have identified many of the photographs, some are still mysteries.  If you recognize a player, please let us know!

Many thanks to librarian Kay Lopez, library systems specialist Jennifer Maher, and digital services assistant Kevin Pheasey, who all dedicated many hours of hard work to this project.