Barnard College Archives - Barnard College Publications

Barnard College Archives

Publications

Mortarboard (1894-present)

The Mortarboard is the official yearbook of Barnard College, and has been published every May since 1894, just five years after the college’s 1889 founding. It was originally called The Barnard Annual, and changed its name in 1898. The first issue was wholly text-based, with lengthy descriptions of academic and extracurricular departments, a number of anonymous poems and vignettes, and a list of the 24-person graduating class. The 1902 yearbook was the first to feature photos of each graduate; one or two group photos were printed in prior years.

The Barnard Bulletin (1901-present)

The Bulletin was founded in 1901 as a weekly newspaper, and today is “the oldest continuously published voice on a women’s college campus in the United States,” according to its Web site. At the time of its launch, Barnard was one of only a few colleges in the country to print a weekly newspaper. For financial reasons—the Bulletin had to cease publication for a semester in 2002 due to outstanding debts—it switched to a biweekly schedule in 2007. It has also shifted gradually from a traditional newspaper design, printed on newsprint, to a more features-oriented, glossy-paged magazine format.[click here]

The Barnard Bear (1903-22, 1944-48)

The Barnard Bear was a quarterly literary magazine which, throughout its years of publication, struggled to maintain a working budget and to increase the volume of submissions. Attempted solutions were intriguing: “In case it was shyness which prevented young authors from submitting their papers … anyone who wished could drop her unsigned manuscript into a tin box … If the editors accepted it they announced its title, and as soon as a writer proved her authorship by means of her handwriting, it was published.” To fund publication, the Bear sold subscriptions ($1 per year) and included several pages of advertisements in each issue.

The Barnard Barnacle (1923-27)

The Barnard Barnacle was a monthly literary journal styled satirically on the New Yorker. Each issue featured short stories, poetry, and other creative writing on topics ranging from feet (Oct. 1923) to worms (Nov. 1923) to what happened to Beauty and the Beast ten years after the Disney story ended (June 1924). It was “sufficiently undignified to be really friendly,” Undergraduate President Edna Trull wrote in the Oct. 1923 issue.

Other Publications

Barnard’s history includes a large number of arts and literary magazines aside from the Bear and the Barnacle. Between 1959 and 1995, these publications included the Barnard Literary Magazine, Barnard Poetry, the Barnard Quarterly, Bottle of Wine, Folkus, Fracas, Jabowoc, Upstart (briefly called The Paper Ladle), and 13th Article. Beginning in 1992, the Barnard Organization of Black Women published Soul Sister. Today, the Proxy serves the same niche, with pieces geared toward Barnard’s African-American population; and Echoes serves as the college’s 21st-century literary magazine.

The 1960s and ‘70s also saw the development of nonfiction publications at Barnard. The annual journal A Woman’s Work offered brief essays on careers for women—from accounting and engineering to law and journalism—and the Undergraduate Journal of Barnard College published students’ academic papers on a variety of topics.

Barnard has also produced a number of faculty newsletters. The Barnard Byliner, launched in 1975, was a monthly bulletin for staff, faculty, and administrators. A similar publication, At Barnard, was launched in 1985. The Barnard Weekly Newsletter (1977-1999) was the longest-running of these newsletters, and was a self-described means of facilitating “regular communication within the administration, from the administration to the faculty, from committees to the faculty and administration and, on occasion, from the Board of Trustees of the College to the faculty and administration.”

The Barnard Annual and Mortarboard can be found on shelves A1-A4. All other historical publications can be found on shelves H1 and H2.

Additionally all titles are found in CLIO the Library catalog.

Publications description written by Maggie Astor '11.

revised 2/6/09