My first visit with yearbook staffs usually involves getting them to understand that yearbooks are more than about them and their friends. We talk about how yearbooks are also public records, history books, and advertisements for their school. If you’re having a difficult time getting your students to understand how important yearbooks are to history, have them visit Ancestry.com.

The popular genealogy website (where I personally discovered that my husband is a distant relative of Bill Clinton) has just added yearbooks to their database of search-able public records. To view their yearbook collection (spanning from 1875 to 1988), click here. According to USA Today, you can find old pictures of Brad Pitt, Betty White, Will Smith, Sandra Bullock, Alec Baldwin, Matt Lauer, Jay Leno, Nicolas Cage, and more…

They also have a great article on the important role yearbooks play in history and genealogy. Read it here.