Skillman Library’s Special Collections and Digital Scholarship Services are pleased to announce the launch of the Lafayette Magazine digital collection, a project backed by a generous donation to the Friends of Skillman Library from former Lafayette President Arthur J. Rothkopf and his wife Barbara. The collection consists of nearly 800 issues and over 20,000 pages of this signature alumni publication spanning more than 85 years.

Selections from the Lafayette Alumni Magazine Collection

The collection, whose construction was overseen by DSS’ Visual Resources Curator Paul Miller, features newly digitized copies of Lafayette’s alumni magazine, beginning with the first issue of the Lafayette Alumnus from 1930. Over the course of the following decades the publication went through a number of iterations changing its name to the Lafayette Alumni Quarterly in 1974 and then the Lafayette Magazine in 1988 and spawning a tabloid news version, Lafayette Alumni News, in 1971. The collection traces all of these changes and includes the supplementary sports publications the Football News Letter later named the Leopard Letter, that were sent out during football season between 1939 and 1966. Together these publications contain a unique record of the college and its development over time, which will be updated periodically with new issues.

Users will now be able to search the full text of these issues and browse through highlights of campus life from recent decades. “The alumni news is a useful tool in researching Lafayette on a local level,” explains Diane Shaw Director of Special Collections. “All of the major campus events are included, and its pages contain high quality photographs that we do not always hold in our collections. Though we have a paper copy on hand, this online version gives us unprecedented access to this material and the ability to quickly research and share Lafayette’s history with our alumni and our community.”

The collection joins the Lafayette Newspaper digital collection and Special Collections’ Historical Photograph Collection to offer a comprehensive look at the history of Lafayette College.

To view the collection, visit digital.lafayette.edu/collections/magazine.

For more information on starting a digital project with DSS or applying for an internship opportunity contact us at digital@lafayette.edu, or call (610) 330-5796.