PEARCY -- Lake Hamilton High School students are leading an effort to collect images from every yearbook in the school's history that will adorn two event rooms in the new multipurpose arena.
Students in the Environmental and Spatial Technologies classes are working to digitize photos from yearbooks dating back to 1947. Custom wallpaper featuring the images will line both event rooms.
The arena will be one of the final projects to be completed with funds from a 2013 millage campaign. Lake Hamilton voters approved a 3.9 mill increase in order for the district to secure $4.4 million in partnership funding from the state.
The bulk of the partnership funds were distributed for the career learning building, which was completed by the beginning of the school year, and a new middle school. The arena and the middle school are expected to be completed later this year.
The idea for the custom wallpaper stemmed from tours that school officials took of other high school and college facilities. Brian Bridges, the district communications coordinator, said Alma's facility includes a room decorated with yearbook photos somewhat larger than a standard yearbook.
Lake Hamilton has been working with the community since August to collect yearbooks from each year. EAST students began scanning images in October.
"They are going to make custom wallpaper with the history of Lake Hamilton," Bridges said. "So it will be neat for all of our alumni."
The arena will feature the Lake Hamilton Alumni Room and a Heritage Hospitality Room. Both rooms will be available for special events.
One room will oversee the gym court and the other will overlook the football field from the second floor of the arena. The rooms will feature memorabilia, custom wallpaper and flooring from the original gym floor.
The first Lake Hamilton yearbook was made in 1947. Nine smaller schools began to consolidate in 1945 to form the new district.
Yearbooks from each class are available in the library, but not every copy is in good condition. Traci Britt, EAST facilitator, said they preferred to scan yearbooks in good condition and then return them to their owners.
"We are trying to preserve that history in our library," Britt said.
The school is still hoping to obtain complete yearbooks in good condition from the following years: 1947, 1949, 1950, 1957, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1985, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Senior Meg Ballard and sophomore Benjamin Love lead much of the digitizing work. Senior John Brewer also scans photos regularly when not involved in other projects.
Britt said the scanning work helps to keep other students busy when they may be in between other projects.
"They have enjoyed it," Bridges said. "We have had several 'throwback Thursdays' with pictures of current staff that are still here. Some of our employees have been here for 40 years."
Each image is scanned at 300 dots per inch to create images of a high enough quality that can be used in larger sizes, depending on the final design.
The process includes tedious work of students labeling each image and organizing them in the correct files. Both of the EAST room's scanners are dedicated to the project when available.
Individual student photos will not be used for the wallpaper. Separate photos that may appear on pages with student photos are scanned separately for the files.
Each yearbook averages 20-40 pages, excluding the student photo pages. They range from 12-13 pages to 50-60.
Britt said students can completely scan as many two yearbooks in a class period, depending on the size, when both scanners are available.
Britt hopes to have scanned all available yearbooks in the coming weeks. School officials will meet with designers within the next two months to determine the final wallpaper design.
"Doing this has spurred the option of us having a kiosk in our new arena for our public to go in and be able to digitally look through yearbooks," Britt said.
Individual student photos would be included in the files if a kiosk is added to the arena. EAST students would lead the work for that project as well.
Britt said other students were inspired to create a band history video with the yearbook images.
Local on 01/27/2015