The Center for Brooklyn History, Brooklyn Public Library's history archive on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights, is asking Brooklynites for their old school yearbooks. The library announced the drive on October 16: it is collecting elementary, middle and high school yearbooks from Brooklyn schools to fill the gaps in its Brooklyn Schools Collection.

If there is a yearbook from P.S. something or a Brooklyn high school sitting in a closet, a basement box or a parent's bookshelf, this is where it can end up.

What the collection already holds

The Brooklyn Schools Collection spans 100 years of yearbooks from about 150 public and private schools in the borough. According to the library, people use it to track down old friends, to study how young people lived and what they cared about in earlier generations, and to find pictures of well-known people from before they were well known.

The library lists some of those faces: Shirley Chisholm, Larry David, Larry King, Rhea Perlman, Roxie Roker, John Salley, Barbra Streisand and Janet Yellen, among others, all of whom turn up in Brooklyn yearbooks in the collection.

Every yearbook added fills in another school or another class year, which is the point of the drive: the library is looking for the years and schools it does not have yet.

How to offer one

The process starts online, not at the door. Brooklyn Public Library has a short form at bklynlibrary.org/brooklyn-yearbook that asks for:

  • your name, email and mailing address,
  • the school's name, the year and the yearbook's title,
  • its condition, picked from three choices: like new; a little worn with all pages, cover and spine attached; or very worn, missing pages or a cover,
  • and anything else you want to share about the book.

After a submission, the library says it will be in touch. The form does not list a drop-off address or a mailing address, so fill it out first and wait for the library to say where the book should go rather than bringing it in unannounced.

About the Center for Brooklyn History

The Center for Brooklyn History was formed in 2020, when the Brooklyn Historical Society merged with Brooklyn Public Library's Brooklyn Collection. It occupies a landmark building at 128 Pierrepont Street designed by George B. Post, and the library describes its holdings as the most comprehensive collection of materials on Brooklyn's history and culture anywhere. Yearbooks that come in through the drive become part of that archive.

The building is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed Sunday. The Othmer Library research room on the second floor keeps shorter hours: Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 5:45 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. The 2, 3, 4, 5 and R trains all stop nearby, at Borough Hall and Court Street.

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