Saint Louis University History

Please visit the SLU Archives LibGuide for further information on our holdings

The official newspaper of Saint Louis University since 1919

Demographic and financial information about the University

Interactive map of the Frost Campus of Saint Louis University

@ The Edge of Change Project

From the main SLU web page

Link to the finding aid database used by the SLU Archives

Link to the main library web page

Link to the ContentDM system, which holds all of the materials scanned as part of the SLU Archives' ongoing digitization efforts

Directory of religious (primarily Catholic) archives in the Saint Louis metropolitan area

Directory of Archival Repositories in the Saint Louis Metropolitan Area

Digital Collections provide online access to many of the unique holdings of Saint Louis University Libraries. Thousands of photographs, archival documents, images from Medieval manuscripts, Civil War muster rolls, yearbooks, SLU course catalogs, and other materials have been scanned, organized, and presented online.

The Saint Louis University Archives contains over 250,000 images, dating from the early nineteenth century to the present. The library has digitized thousands of photographs and is compiling them into a searchable digital collection. This collection includes not only photographs, but pamphlets, drawings, newspapers, and other archival materials. It covers a very wide range of topics, but with special focus on the Jesuits, SLU student life, aviation, Parks College, soccer, and other sports.

The Archives Image Collection is an ongoing project. Additional images are continually being digitized and added to the collection, so please check back often for updates.

The Saint Louis University Catalogs date back to the 1828-1829 academic year, which was the first year that SLU was administered by the Jesuits. These catalogs, which contain the names of students and faculty, course reading lists, commencement programs, and other information on each academic year, are an invaluable source on the history of the university in the 19th Century.
Several of the catalogs (1829-1835, 1838, and 1847) no longer exist in their original format, but were preserved as typewritten transcripts. These transcripts are included here. There is also no catalog for 1849, because the 1848-1849 academic year was cut short by a major cholera epidemic, which brought the entire city of St. Louis to a halt for several months.

The Saint Louis University yearbook, known as "The Archive," was published 1913-1941, 1945-1971, and 1981-2005. Between 1972 and 1980 the university instead published a "graduate record" or "senior book" that documented the senior class over its four year history rather than the whole university for a single year. Schools and colleges within the university have occasionally issued their own yearbooks: School of Medicine (1907, 1944, 1981, 1985, 1987), School of Dentistry (1944), and Parks College (1972). In addition, the collection includes the only yearbook printed by the Marion-Sims-Beaumont College of Medicine (1903), which became the SLU School of Medicine later that year. Because of the variety of layouts and graphic techniques employed in these materials, browsing the collection may provide better results than performing a keyword search. Not all individuals pictured in the yearbooks are identified, nor does every individual necessarily have his/her own photograph.

Complete run of SLU alumni publications, digitized and available in PDF format

This collection contains a number of major histories of Saint Louis University. These volumes -- some long out of print -- have been digitized and organized into fully searchable online resources to make them immediately accessible to the community of SLU students, faculty, staff, and alumni and to researchers beyond the university. Each volume is online in its entirety and full-text searchable. However, because of the variety of layouts and typefaces used in these materials, browsing the collection may provide better results than performing a keyword search.

The Walter J. Ong Collection Web Site serves as a portal to provide scholars, students, and researchers with information about the Walter J. Ong Manuscript Collection, to host a digital repository of collection materials, and to serve as a comprehensive resource on the life and works of Walter J. Ong, S.J. Walter Jackson Ong, S.J. (1912-2003) was a professor of English at Saint Louis University for over thirty years. Over the course of his career, Ong wrote a number of groundbreaking studies in the fields of orality and literacy studies. Some of these works include Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, The Presence of the Word, and Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue.

A 2003 digital exhibition on the Ravenna Mosaics Company.

WEW: We Enlighten the World: Saint Louis University and the Early Days of Radio. WEW, the original radio station of Saint Louis University, was the first radio station West of the Mississippi River.

Running from 2006 to 2011, the Billiken Club Poster Collection documents a vibrant period in the cultural life of SLU and the local St. Louis music scene by representing the convergence of two different artistic spheres – the visual and the musical – at a time when Saint Louis was home to energetic and creative members of both. The Billiken Club Poster collection contains 75 color prints produced for the Billiken Club by the Firecracker Press using modern computer assisted design techniques with manual printing. A new series of posters was produced for each concert season, and many of these series employed inventive design elements, such as prints combining to form a larger image or folding into small artists’ book

The Saint Louis University Athletics Media Guides Collection from the University Archives contains media guides, sports programs, and other Athletics-related materials dating back to 1958. This digital collection will eventually include all materials in this collection, starting with the Basketball and Soccer teams. These media guides have been digitized and organized into fully searchable online resources to make them immediately accessible to the community of SLU students, faculty, staff, and alumni and to researchers beyond the university. They include athletes' stats, box scores, histories of each team, and other valuable information on the history of SLU athletics.

The Athletics Media Guide Collection is an ongoing project. Additional materials are continually being digitized and added to the collection, so please check back often for updates. This project has been created through the cooperation of the SLU Libraries Digitization Center and University Archives.

Saint Louis University provides access to these materials for educational research purposes only. For materials protected by copyright, permission to publish must be obtained from the respective copyright holder. For Saint Louis University publications, permission must be sought from Saint Louis University.

The Saint Louis University Historical Records Collection from the University Archives of SLU Libraries Special Collections contains archives and manuscripts dating from 1639 to 1966. This digital collection will eventually include all 33 series in the Archival Collection. The first series to be digitized are composed of items related to library administration and student activities with the inclusion of documents encompassing various Catholic institutions besides St. Louis University.

This collection is comprised of records, manuscripts, ephemera, etc. and produced more or less during the first century of the University community, which includes the school itself, St. Francis Xavier (College) Church, and the Jesuits responsible for them both. Along with the University Scrapbooks, this collection represents the preponderance of primary sources relating to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history of Saint Louis University.

Complete run of the Woodstock Letters, a periodical published by and for the Jesuits as "a record of current events and historical notes connected with the colleges and missions of the Society of Jesus in North and South America."

Complete run of the Review for Religious, a journal for men and women religious published by the Jesuits from 1942 to 2012. Reproduced with permission of the Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus.

A collaborative digital project to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, including over 250 documents from the Saint Louis University Archives. Hosted by the Missouri History Museum.