Lethbridge man passes torch on historic yearbook collection

About a decade ago, Bruce Haigripped the binding out of his sister's 1946 yearbook for Lethbridge Collegiate and scanned it into his desktop computer. That was the start of a digital collection that nowdocumentsthe city's students for almost 100 years.

"I like yearbooks because I've always been interested in how people change over the years," Haig said.

Haigdeveloped a website where his collection of 123yearbooks was on display. It was a basic site, but it got the job done and had visitors from all around the world.

He says the project developed from a deep interest in Canadianhistory and hisbackground as a former teacher.

People from the community drive by Haig's house and drop off the books when they're ready to part with them, but he says that's the biggest impediment to his history project.

"It's not that easy to get people to part with their yearbooks," he laughs.

Even his own wife, who used to teach.

"She's got some yearbooks I don't have yet and she won't give them to me."

Finding a new home

At 80, Haigdecided he couldn't keep the yearbook collection up much longer, but thought it was still worth keeping it alive. So he approached the University of Lethbridge to house the collection on its servers and the schoolhappily accepted the offer.

It's the first time the university has worked on a collection with an individual from the Lethbridge community.

"The person at home with the pictures would have been the only person who could see this item. Now, it's available for the whole world to see, so it creates connections with different people," said Jake Cameron, the system support specialist at the U of L library.

"There's things out there that might not be relevant to everybody, but they're still relevant to somebody."

Cameron worked with Haig to move the collection over to the university's website. He's also made it searchable, sopeople can type in a name and find their yearbooks.

Haigwrotea letter to the editor in the local paper asking those who are willing tocontinue dropping off their books at his place, and he will get them to theuniversity.