Stacks of yellowed newsprint on a table in the Mardigian Library archive show what made front-page news at UM-Dearborn in 1972. There’s a 156-pint Red Cross blood drive, record enrollment of 4,300 students and the triumphant return of the cafeteria coffee and sandwich vending machines.
Not too far away from the table, there are nine more boxes full of newspapers — and all of them are now available to search through the UM-Dearborn Student Publication Database.
UM-Dearborn Archivist Hannah Zmuda says the newly launched, fully searchable public digital archive offers a look at more than 60 years of student culture, campus politics and daily life.
The digitized collection spans 1,335 issues from 1962 to 2024. It features roughly 1,100 editions of The Michigan Journal, around 100 early precursor papers and about 100 literary journals like Lyceum. The literary journal is accessible with a umich.edu login.
Student papers capture campus life in a way formal annual reports and the Board of Regents’ minutes never could, Zmuda notes. “Newspapers were published so regularly that you end up getting a much more holistic look at a place and time,” she says.
Zmuda points our one of the earliest student publications (The Dearborn Wolverine, Dec. 9, 1963), which mentions the President John F. Kennedy assassination and shares how two students — Tom Carroll and Mike Metevier — traveled to Washington, D.C., to view the memorial procession. But Zmuda was surprised that it wasn’t the top story.
Instead, an article about campus apartments, where students could get a single-occupancy one-bedroom apartment for $65 a month, appeared above the fold. "The top headline on the page is about the Board of Regents approving an apartment building, and then below the fold is JFK's assassination," Zmuda laughs. "I don't want to say it's funny, because it's not, but it gives you a point of view of the students at the time and what was directly impacting their lives."
Beyond major headlines, the archives capture the irreverent human touches that define student life across generations. There are MAD Magazine-style cartoons, inside jokes on the personal pages and a 1980s satire story that involved pink lawn flamingos. The plastic birds were pictured across campus — with the student body president and in the chancellor’s office — looking for answers on why they couldn’t register for classes because they lacked the proper forms. “That one made me laugh,” Zmuda says. “College students have always been college students. And I enjoy the irreverent humor of Generation X.”
Having the issues digitized helps people worldwide look for items like old sports scores, photos or memorable campus events. Members of the campus community and the public can email their campus history questions, but Zmuda says it’s important for researchers and alums to have a depth of information. “Allowing people to browse for years of campus history on their own time adds a color and flavor you don’t get if I just email you one isolated clipping," she says.
Zmuda says public access and research were driving forces behind the project — but preservation was another motivation.
“Newsprint, by design, is cheap and highly acidic. Over time, exposure to oxygen and light degrades the paper, causing it to turn yellow, brittle and eventually crumble into dust. While there was no severe deterioration that prevented us from handling these issues today, if we had waited another 10 or 20 years, all of a sudden you would start having major losses," she explains.
With the student publications project complete, Zmuda is interested in adding other campus materials to the archive.
While personal research papers are generally no longer accepted due to space constraints, she is eager to catalog department meeting minutes, curriculum records, campus maps and university bulletins. “If I can’t keep the materials for the archive, I can get them back to you if you request that,” she says. “We want to do what we can to preserve the university’s story.”
The UM-Dearborn student publications digitization project was made possible through a grant from the U-M Inclusive History Project.
Story by Sarah Tuxbury
