Northfield News photo by Kaylin Hreha
That’s right. It took me about 3 months of scanning, but I did it.
I always wanted to somehow harvest all of the names and faces in a yearbook, but with Facebook and new digital ways, it seemed a waste to have this “social resource” sitting on the shelf.
How many times have you gone to your yearbooks over the years to look up the face of someone you went to school with or just to reminisce? We’ll if you are like me, you’ve hit the mother-load!
What I’ve done is scanned just the seniors, covers and pages of historical importance from every Northfield High School year book. Now, I must confess, there hasn’t been a yearbook published every since year since 1877, but I’ve scanned all that have been, beginning with the first version called the “Orange and Black” and then every “Norhian” starting in 1948.
In a moment, I’m going to link you to a page on my site dedicated to my findings along with various ways to view the scans. See, I’ve upload every scanned image to Facebook where alumni have devoured the pages, commenting, reflecting and “tagging” each other. When you tag a face, it instantly ties in your Facebook profile information to your image. This makes it a wonderful tool to search for people, finding old friends whom may not have the same last name that you knew.
Fast Facts:
- It’s pronounced “Nor-HIGH-an”, which is short for Northfield High Annual.
- Total Pages Scanned by Tim:1443
- Total Seniors Scanned:12,927
- Total Seniors “Tagged”on Facebook (at the time of this post) 3,687
- Years Involved 1877 –2011
- Names of Yearbooks:“The Orange and Black”and “The Norhian”
- Number of yearbooks printed and scanned:67 (as of 2011)
- I’ve had a few tell me they hadn’t ever seen their yearbook because they couldn’t afford one.
- In the 50’s you’ll see stories of Yosh Murakami, an Asian choir director that dressed like a “Pirate” and would run around with a sword during pep-fests. This was the inspiration for the “Raider” mascot. Here’s a whole blog I did on it.
