The University Archives in UNO Criss Library Archives & Special Collections is the official repository for materials related to UNO history. The collection includes publications from university offices and departments, course catalogs, yearbooks, budget materials, Board of Regents and Faculty Senate minutes, graduate and undergraduate theses, a significant collection of photographs, personal papers and organizational records, and more all documenting UNO history. Original and on-line copies of the YELLow Sheet and Gateway student newspapers are also available.
The Gateway Newspaper Archive was launched in 2007 by UNO Libraries as a UNO Centennial Project. UNO student newspaper The Gateway offers readers a glimpse into campus life. Articles, photo captions, advertisements, and specific dates can be searched in newspaper issues dating back to 1922. Current issues of The Gateway are available on the newspaper's website.
Very early on Monday morning November 9, 1911, someone clandestinely posted two yellow sheets of paper on a bulletin board in Redick Hall, a stately Victorian mansion and the only structure on the University of Omaha (OU) campus. When students and faculty began arriving they discovered that these pages were volume one number one of the YELLow Sheet, the first OU student newspaper and a decidedly underground publication.
The University of Omaha was a young institution when the YELLow Sheet made its mysterious appearance. Founded under the sponsorship of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Omaha, classes had begun at OU only a couple years earlier with an enrollment of 26 students. The university was also quite conservative at the time and administrators were not entirely pleased with the anonymous and unsanctioned nature of this publication. Yet, as subsequent issues appeared, the YELLow Sheet quickly gained popularity among both students and faculty. By early 1912, its editors were known and the newspaper had received administrative approval.
The YELLow Sheet offers readers a wonderful glimpse into the early University of Omaha campus experience. As the first generation of OU students reach out to us in these pages, it does not seem all that long ago that they roamed the halls of Redick mansion.
The newest digital collection from Criss Library, the University of Nebraska at Omaha's yearbooks, have been digitized and are now available from the Internet Archive and DigitalCommons@UNO.
Breakaway. The Omahan. The Gateway. Tomahawk. Maverick. The university's yearbook went by several names beginning as the Gateway then changing names to the Omahan, Tomahawk, and Breakaway before ending as the Maverick from 1973-1975. The first yearbook, the Gateway (1915-1927), shares its name with the university’s longtime student newspaper. The Tomahawk endured as the campus publication's name the longest from 1936 through 1970. In addition to the name changes, users will notice the changing composition of the volumes over the years as materials and styles evolved.
Whatever the yearbook's name or format, users will find each volume keyword searchable or able to be read like a book online. Yearbooks typically include photos and information about students, events, and faculty. In addition to student organizations, athletics, the arts, and other activities, the yearbooks also present opportunities for alumni, current students, and interested researchers to investigate changing fashions, popular culture, advertisements, and events through the lens of the university's students.
This exciting project was made possible through the LYRASIS Digitization Collaborative – a Sloan Foundation grant-subsidized program that has made digitization easy and affordable for libraries and cultural institutions across the country.
Through the Collaborative’s partnership with the Internet Archive, all items were scanned from cover- to-cover and in full color. You can choose from a variety of formats, page through a book choosing the “read online” option, download the PDF or search the full text version.
Copies of each volume of the yearbook are also available for use in Criss Library Archives & Special Collections.
Reflections in Time is a series of 125 interviews produced from 1979 to 2007 with former OU and UNO staff, faculty, administrators, alumni, and others. Of the 125 interviews in this series, the first 73 programs were produced by UNO Professor of Communication Paul Borge and the final 52 were produced by UNO Dean of Arts & Sciences Jack Newton.
UNO students searching the library's card catalog. All of our search tools are now online!
Credit: UNO Photograph Collection, Archives & Special Collections, Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library, University of Nebraska at Omaha.
UNO's former bowling alley in the Milo Bail Student Center. The bowling alley was lost to growing space demands in the 1970s.
Credit: UNO Photograph Collection, Archives & Special Collections, Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library, University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Materials documenting UNO history have always been collected and supervised by library staff members. Over 100 years of UNO history there have been five library areas or structures. The first was a separate room in Joslyn Hall on the original 24th and Pratt Street campus. The second library was a temporary structure between Joslyn Hall and Jacobs Gymnasium. When the university moved to the present campus in 1938 the library was located in room 220 of the current Arts & Sciences Hall. Space concerns prompted the construction of Gene Eppley Library in 1956, now the Eppley Administration Building. Criss Library, the fifth and current home of University Archives, was completed in 1976.