Where to look when your relative's yearbook is not online

If the yearbook you want is not in the Internet Archive, not in a library portal and not on this site, that does not mean it is gone. It usually means no one has scanned it. This guide goes through the places to look next, in the order that tends to find something, and what to expect from each.

First, confirm it is not online

Run the searches in how to find old yearbooks online, and check our Massachusetts directory for the school and year. A book may be scanned under a different school name, or sit in a library portal that does not appear in a general search.

Find the physical copy

Search WorldCat. WorldCat is a catalog of library holdings, and it lists which libraries hold a given title. Search the school name and "yearbook", or the title printed on the cover. A school may have a library entry even when the book is not scanned.
Ask the public library's local-history room. Many keep a complete run of the town's yearbooks and will check a name in the senior list for you or send a photograph of the page.
Ask the school. The library or main office may hold a run, and the alumni office may. See whether schools keep their yearbooks.
Ask the historical society and the state or university library. Families donate yearbooks, and colleges collect from the schools whose students came to them.
Check the alumni association. Alumni groups often keep scans of years the school lost, and the members may own the book you want.

Be specific when you ask: the full name, the school, the year, and exactly what you need, such as one page photographed. Staff time is limited and some places charge a copying fee. Offer to pay it.

Find a copy you can own

Yearbooks turn up for sale. eBay (affiliate link) is one place to check, and so are antiquarian bookshops, estate sales and the online marketplaces for used books. Search for the school and the year, and ask the seller to look up one name. If you buy one, consider scanning it for others: see how to scan and preserve an old yearbook.

Find the person without the book

The yearbook is one record of a school year. Others may name the same person:

Graduation lists. Local newspapers printed lists of graduates, and some school committee and town reports printed them too. We build class-roster pages from reports of that kind, such as Arlington High School, class of 1910, copied from the School Committee's annual report. Those pages are names only, with no portraits. Chronicling America, at the Library of Congress, has digitized newspapers.
Commencement and class day programs. They are often in the same library collection as the yearbook, or in a family's papers.
The census. The 1930 and 1940 censuses record the family's address and whether a teenager was in school. They are on FamilySearch (free account) and on the National Archives site.
City directories, which can place a student on a street. See how to use them.
Other yearbooks. A student may appear in a club photograph or a team list in another year's book, or in a college annual.

Ask other people

Classmates' descendants are often searching for the same book, and a post in a town's genealogy group or Facebook page can turn up a copy. The volunteer county sites of the USGenWeb Project have coordinators who often know the local sources.

Keep a record of what you tried

Write down each place you asked, the date, and the answer, including a "not held". A negative result is useful: it keeps you from repeating the search, and it is worth sharing with the next researcher (or with us) if a school says its run begins in a later year. Many libraries have gaps in the years their yearbooks cover, and a note about what is missing can help them fill it.

What we can and cannot do

We publish only books we have read, from open archives, and we cannot search a book that is not online. If you own a yearbook that is not online, we would like to know: write to us at hello@theclassalbum.com with the school and year. If you are looking for a name in a book we publish, the name search is the place to start, and every person page has a link to ask for the full-resolution scan of the page.

Last checked 20 October 2026.