By Tyler Dahlgren

Lincoln Public Schools has built an impressive collection of archives over its 102 years in existence, and now the district is bringing its rich history to life.

“There’s so many cool pieces of our history just kind of tucked away in all those file folders downstairs,” said LPS Director of Library of Services Dr. Chris Haeffner. “We’d been wrestling with how to make those archives open to the public for a long time.”

About a decade ago, an anonymous LPS donor with a passion for the district’s past requested that the archives be digitized. A foolproof way of preserving history, Haeffner agreed, but no small task for a school district that serves more than 42,000 kids, the second biggest in its state.

“We’ve done little projects here and there, collections of photos and things like that, but that donor has been driving us to create public access to our school history for years now,” said Haeffner. “We didn’t really have a path for making that happen until now.”

It was the summer of 2023 when Dr. Haeffner and LPS cataloger/archivist Sara Scott decided to dive into their district’s past. 

“It was important to us, because people care about this stuff, they want to see it, and we have it,” Scott said. “I get questions all the time about the archives. People want to donate things and they want to know what we have. It’s really interesting, and preserving the history of schools that have closed, too, we see that as our responsibility.”

The duo didn’t know exactly what the project would entail, or even where to start. They just knew they needed to start.

“It’s good that we kind of just jumped in that summer,” said Scott. “If we would have thought about it too hard, it would’ve gotten too complicated.”

They’d build the plane as they flew it, Haeffner said. And since this was being done for the community as much as it was being done for the district, why not ask Lincolnites where to start?

“We decided to begin with yearbooks,” Haeffner said. “That was really the lowest hanging fruit. It’s the thing we get the most requests for, especially around reunion season. That’s what people want.”

The late spring release of the school yearbook, as timeless a school tradition as mini milk cartons, Valentine’s Day boxes and spirit weeks. Tangible pieces of history, the yearbook’s pages tell the story of another school year come and gone. For the people in the pages, a yearbook, and the memories stored between its beginning and its end, is priceless.

Haeffner knew the (now retired) librarian at Lincoln High School had been hard at work digitizing LHS yearbooks. She picked up the phone and picked her brain.

“Her efforts really inspired us to pick up the mantle and do it for all of our schools,” said Haeffner. “It was her work that kind of opened our eyes to what could be.”

Haeffner settled on Issuu, an electronic publishing platform renowned for its “flipbook” design and ease-of-use. They didn’t have the right equipment to efficiently scan yearbooks, so Haeffner turned her focus to machinery and settled on a refurbished scanner that she says resembles a Mack Truck.

With so much to comb through, they quickly discovered that the process was going to be tedious. They needed another hand on deck. More manpower. Enter Logan Burbach, a Lincoln High senior with an interest in arts and humanities and part time work.

“He does such a phenomenal job,” said Haeffner. “He moves fast and has done an incredible amount of work for us. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without someone in that position.”

Flash forward 18 months, and though a grand release to the public is still a little ways away, it’s remarkable to see what the small team of librarians-turned-curators of LPS history have accomplished. Each Lincoln high school (East and North Star will be done in the near future) has a database on its website filled with decades of accessible yearbooks.

“It is super cool to see how the different generations are represented through their yearbooks,” Haeffner said. “We look in the ones during the World War II era, and we see the tributes to students who had left to go fight in the war and to students who had died in combat. It’s a powerful part of our district’s story.”

There are schools that have been closed for a lifetime that they’re not going to forget either. Lincoln landmarks from yesteryear like Havelock, Whittier, Bethany and Jackson. Those pages will likely end up living on the district office library’s home page, Haeffner guessed.

“It’s really fun to see the excitement in the community when they realize they can find their own yearbook, or their dad’s yearbook, or their grandma’s yearbook,” she went on. “It’s something that has generated excitement about our schools, and it’s really fun.”

Communities form around schools, said Scott, and the interest the people of Lincoln have taken in their project has been invigorating and incentive enough to keep going, to flip to the next page.

“It’s really reassuring that people are invested and so passionate about this stuff,” she continued. “They really care about their schools and they really care about everything that’s come before.”

In the future, they even hope to get to the middle and elementary school levels. They know that might get tricky, but they haven’t backed away from anything yet. It’s funny, what started as tedious, monotonous work has become more fascinating by the day.

“It has been so interesting,” said Scott. “My husband is really into history too, so I send him a lot of ‘You won’t believe this’ texts during the day. There’s just always something neat to find.”

A few weeks ago, Haeffner and her team invested in a 3D printer. She doesn’t know how it works yet, she admitted with a laugh, but the possibilities are endless. And her imagination seems to be running on full throttle these days.

“We still have a lot to figure out, but the vision is to have this really, really cool virtual museum,” she said. “We have lettermen jackets from the early 1900s, trophies and memorabilia from a hundred years ago, pompoms from the 1950s and different things that we could just take a picture and post online, but bringing those to life in 3D will be more fun for the public to interact with.”

Neither Haeffner or Scott grew up in Lincoln–Haeffner’s from Omaha and Scott moved to Nebraska from Kansas–but this trip down the Capital City’s memory lane has been an adventure they’ll never forget.

“When I found this job, it was perfect at the time,” said Scott, who is on her way to becoming a certified archivist. “It just continues to be perfect. It keeps growing into everything I wanted it to be.”

Just a while back, a gentleman from Lincoln who had caught wind of LPS’s project was surfing eBay when he found a series of yearbooks that happened to be missing from Lincoln Northeast’s online collection. The man bought the books and sent them Haeffner’s way.

It was a simple gesture, but sometimes it’s simple gestures that mean the most.

“Our alumni feel invested in Lincoln Public Schools, and we certainly feel invested in our alumni,” said Haeffner. “This is just a really great way to celebrate the history and accomplishments of LPS and everyone who’s been a part of this school district.”