Maybe your friend that lives across the country called you up upset that they lost their yearbook. You’d love to share yours with her, but she lives across the country. Or maybe you’re a genealogy buff that recognizes the historical value of your yearbook and want to preserve it.
Is there a way that you can have your yearbook scanned and accessible from the Internet? Yes, with Classmates’ commitment to preserving high school history across the U.S., it prides itself on scanning physical yearbooks to add to its online collection of almost half a million yearbooks. Once your book is scanned and uploaded, it will be sent right back to you!
Here’s how you can submit your yearbook to Classmates.com® so that it can be digitized forever for anyone to enjoy.
How to Have Your Yearbook Scanned & Digitized in the Classmates Collection
Classmates offers a free yearbook scanning service for elementary, middle, high school, and college yearbooks as long as your yearbook isn’t already in the online yearbook collection, is from the United States, meets the eligible year requirements and isn’t damaged.
Here are the steps to finding out if you’re eligible to submit your U.S. yearbook to Classmates and what the process looks like to get your yearbook scanned, digitized, and sent back to you:
- Make Sure It’s Not Already In the Collection
Check on the Classmates Homepage
If you’re a registered member on Classmates, since you provided your school name and grad year when you signed up, any yearbooks from your years at the school will automatically show up on your Classmates.com homepage when you login.
Check there to see if your yearbook has already been digitized.
Do a Quick Yearbook Search
Alternatively, you could kick off a yearbook search to see if the yearbook(s) you’d like to submit are already featured there. In the search bar, type out your school name, state, and publication year of the yearbook to see if it shows up in the results.
For example, if you went to Reading High School in PA, you would type “Reading High School Pennsylvania 1965” to see if your 1965 yearbook is already in the collection:
Example shown for demonstration purposes; actual results may vary.
In this example, the yearbook is in the collection, and shows up in the search results, so you wouldn’t have any need to scan your own yearbook, since someone from your Class List already did it (or Classmates acquired the yearbook from the school, library, or another third party). You can look for similar results with your own school to determine if it’s already been turned into a digital yearbook.
Example shown for demonstration purposes; actual results may vary.
- Confirm That It Meets Classmates’ Requirements for Yearbook Scanning
Here are requirements you must meet in order to submit your yearbook for digitization:
No Damage
Classmates is unable to perform its free yearbook scanning services properly if the yearbook is damaged.
Old yearbooks with the following types of damage cannot be submitted for scanning:
- Loose/torn pages
- Water damage
- Yearbooks with the spine detached
- Yearbooks with missing or damaged covers
- Rodent, dog, animal damage (rodents, dogs, etc.)
- Excessive writing over photographs
United States Yearbooks Only
Classmates is not accepting non-U.S. yearbooks at this time.
Old Enough to Be Scanned
Classmates can only accept yearbooks to upload online to its archive as follows:
- high school yearbooks from or before 2021
- middle school yearbooks from or before 2017
- elementary school yearbooks from or before 2010
- college yearbooks from anytime
- Fill Out Your Submission Details
From the yearbook submission landing page, you need to share specific details about who you are and the yearbook(s) you’re submitting to be scanned and added to the Classmates collection.
Please provide these details about your yearbook: the State, City, High School Name, and Grad Year. Also confirm whether you’re ready to submit the yearbook now, or if you need more time for preparation.
After you provide your personal and yearbook information, click on “Submit”
Additionally, you’ll need to agree to the following terms before you can send your book to Classmates to be scanned and digitized:
I represent that I am the rightful owner of the yearbook and that Classmates.com may scan my yearbook “as-is”, including all hand-written content contained in the book. I grant Classmates the perpetual, non-revocable right and license to use, publish, display, modify, market, distribute, transmit and create derivative works from the yearbook images for use on the world wide web, in email, and in any other electronic, print or mixed media for any purpose. Additionally, I release and discharge Classmates, its affiliates, employees, agents, licensees, successors and assigns from all claims, demands or causes of actions that I may have now or in the future for libel, defamation, invasion of privacy or right of publicity, copyright and/or trademark infringement or violation of any other rights from the use of my yearbook.
- Ship Your Yearbook to Classmates to Be Scanned for Free
Once Classmates confirms your book meets the eligibility requirements for digitization, a shipping label will be sent to you so that you can send it directly to the yearbook scanning department free of charge!
- Wait for an Update
After your yearbook is received and processed, Classmates will perform its yearbook scanning service, upload the yearbook to the digital collection, and send it right back to you.
Please note that it may take some time before you see it live on Classmates.com
Why Should You Scan Your Yearbook
Uploading your yearbook to the Internet can grant alumni, loved ones, and historians access to digital (or even physical) versions of your yearbook:
Simplified Online Access
Once your yearbook is scanned and uploaded to the Internet, think of all the value you’ve created for
- your fellow alumni: all registered alumni from your school that attended it at the same time will now be able to see your yearbook from their logged in homepage. Or they can browse the collection for free and search for it. If they have a CM+ membership, they’ll be able to view the scanned yearbook in full.
- friends & family: people love finding old family photos. By uploading your yearbook, you’ve given the parents, kids, relatives, and friends of your entire Class List digital access to their loved ones’ old school and class photos.
- teachers: many teachers sign up for Classmates to keep in touch with old students. They appreciate your high school nostalgia as much as you do! (P.S., here’s how to search for your old teachers on Classmates to send them a free message!)
- historical/genealogy research: there’s a reason that Ancestry turns to Classmates to help power its yearbook collection; every yearbook is a documented history of that school, time period, and neighborhood. Historical researchers use Classmates’ yearbook collection to help tell the history of the U.S. and its many distinct regions.
UEU, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Yearbook Reprints
For anyone that lost their yearbook over the years, uploading your yearbook to the online collection allows them to order a fresh yearbook reprint*. Once a yearbook is in the collection, Classmates has hard and softcover copies available for sale. Now:
- Alumni can get their own physical copy.
- A loved one can purchase alumni a reprint as the perfect nostalgic gift!
- Local libraries, historical societies, and the school itself can order a reprint to add to their own collection.
Scan Your Yearbook For Free With Classmates
Classmates’ free yearbook scanning service was built to preserve U.S. history and grant anyone access to online copies of yearbooks featuring themselves or their loved ones. By sharing your yearbook to be scanned, digitized, and sent back to you, you’re helping to support this critical mission!
Get started on submitting your yearbook to Classmates today! And of course, register for free to browse the 480,000 yearbooks already in the collection, potentially including some of yours or your loved ones.
*Reprints are created from previously owned yearbooks so handwriting or effects of aging may be present, and pages, images, or other content may be missing or obscured.
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