Over 400 copies of Stylus, Boston College’s original student newspaper, have been digitized and are available online due to a team effort of the Digital Repositories Group and Burns Library.
This is the original masthead from the first edition of the Stylus from 1883.
From 1883 to now, the student newspaper has developed a reputation for being a wellspring of artistic student expression. While the original publication covered administrative, alumni, art, and sports news pertaining to the Boston College community, the paper became a literary magazine in 1933. As a literary arts publication, stories, essays, poetry, and other creative content became usual, with standalone art submissions and occasional illustrations.
This piece was presented on the inside front cover of Winter 1968, issue 2, of the Stylus. It was done by Brian Henehan, a member of the Stylus Art Staff at the time.
Now that so much of the publication has been digitized, it is easily searchable, and specific articles can be found from the first edition in 1883, to the latest digitized copies in 1977. The platform at newspapers.bc.edu provides readers with a set of tools to browse the entire collection, find the title of a specific work, or even a specific word, phrase, or author.
The partnership between Stylus and the Boston College Libraries means more than the availability of digital copies of the magazine online to Boston College students. As newspapers.bc.edu is an open site, anyone with an internet connection is able to search through Stylus looking for trends in student artwork or specific pieces from certain time periods. Being a part of the public domain, all of the work that has been digitized as a result of this process is usable in research. As a result of this digitization, the work of Boston College student artists can reach more people.
Other BC publications made available by the Libraries may be viewed online here.