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(This page's most recent update is March 2026)
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Primarily a North American phenomenon historically, the first yearbook published was the Yale Banner in the early 1800s.I encourage you to research old yearbooks, and not just for yourself and close relatives. What about your ancestors? They went to school too (at least some of them in the last 200 years). And yearbooks have significant igenealogical information,
School yearbooks, which immortalize how we looked and what we did in high school or college. Whether we looked goofy or cool, that photo is there forever. And they document what clubs, sports or other activities we were involved in. And for our ancestors, too!
Ancestry.com has a nice school yearbook collection to search. I would encourage you to check out the schools and years available in the “Browse This Collection” section on the right side of the page in order to look for a specific yearbook. Ancestry requires a subscription. They have over 450,000 yearbooks – that’s yearbooks, not schools.
My Heritage has a huge collection of yearbooks that can be searched. They have over 250,000 yearbooks, again yearbooks, not schools. They also have the Alumni Lists originally provided by Distant Cousin. Some are transcribed and some are scanned page images. My Heritage requires a subscription. World Vital Records (owned by My Heritage), has 115 schools.
The last “big player” is Classmates.com which has a collection of over 350,000 yearbooks where a reprint can be purchased. I will leave it up to you to figure out how to save an image or two. It can be accomplished. You can view the yearbooks by browsing. You do not need to have a subscription, but you are limited as to how many pages that you can view. Register to get better access to more yearbooks.
The Ancestor Hunt has yearbook links from 18,500 schools in the U.S. and Canada. It is free.
The Internet Archive has over 109,000 results if you search for the keyword “yearbooks”. Definitely worth searching if you know the school or association. By and large, the Internet Archive yearbooks are included in The Ancestor Hunt’s list of links.
E-Yearbook.com has a sizable collection available by subscription. You can view by registering. They don’t advertise the number of yearbooks, but it is sizable. They also have a nice collection of Military Yearbooks, and Navy Cruise books.
Skalooza is interesting. It has a good number of yearbooks available; it is easy to register, and the interface is easy to use. Quite honestly, I have had difficulty finding things on this site.
Old Yearbooks collection is a combination of scanned and transcribed. It is a combination of class lists, random class pictures, and a list of links, many that are to Classmates. This site appears to be dead.
Dead Fred has a collection of photos from old yearbooks that you might want to browse.
Don’s List has a nice collection of old yearbooks and alumni association directories, many from Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania. There are over 100 schools.
Ebay and Amazon have a lot of old yearbooks for sale.
GenealogyToday has over 1.700 yearbooks and is a subscription only service. This site appears to be dead.
There are a few link only sites, such as Cyndi’s List, Linkpendium, and Access Genealogy. The number of links are in the low hundreds, although it is difficult to know Linkpendium’s.
Google Books has a wide variety of yearbooks available. Many are from an association and are not related to schools. Worth a search. Unfortunately. most are not viewable.
Hathitrust has a couple hundred full view school yearbooks. Usually there are only a couple of years available, and many are in the early 1900’s.
If you’d like this information in a clean, printable, and well-organized reference format, this topic is also included in the Quicksheet Vault. The Vault is designed for researchers who prefer working tools they can save, print, and reuse — whether that means building a personal binder of key resources or keeping reliable references close at hand. You can learn more about the Quicksheet Vault HERE