At the University of Montevallo, the longest-running homecoming tradition in the United States takes place every year. College Night consists of two student-produced one-act musicals augmented by intramural athletic events and various other competitions. The College Night Production Books serve as a way to document the process from beginning to end and help to immortalize the tradition.

Unfortunately, these Production Books have remained relatively inaccessible over the years, hidden away in the University’s archives. The only way to see them is to set up a meeting with the school archivist. For those interested in them that may not be able to travel to Montevallo, this presents a frustrating problem. This, and the idea of being able to share such a unique local tradition, is why we have decided to take on a monumental task- digitizing the Production Books.

This project is not a short one- between the two of us, there is no hope of getting all 158 books digitized in the short amount of time remaining in the semester. However, we hope that this will begin an on-going process of creating accessibility that will one day include all the Production Books that the University has.

For the Social Life of Books class specifically, we also have another element involving TimelineJS. Using this software, we will track the progression of both the Purple and Gold side Production Books over the years. Obviously we would not have time to do every year, so we have chosen a select few that mark important events in our local history in hopes of showing how College Night reflects them.

Published in the 1919 Technala.

 

This website is a part of the COPLACDigital Spring 2017 course, The Social Life of Books. The course site can be found by clicking on “Course Site” in the menu.