Materials Available Online

University of Michigan units and departments contributed their own histories to the Encyclopedic Survey. Its four volumes were first published in 1942-1954; it was updated and converted to its current, digital form in 2017.

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Start your historical journey into U-M sports! The Bentley is the official archive for the U-M Athletic Department, and our Athletic Archivist has created searchable rosters and other online exhibits about U-M sports.

More than 590 Michigan football game films spanning 55 years of history have been digitized from 16mm film reels and made available online.

The University of Michigan Hall of Honor was established in 1978 to recognize those persons who have made significant contributions to the tradition of Wolverine athletics.

You can now browse through the statistical history and record books of some University of Michigan sports.

Attempts to compile as complete a roster as possible of all individuals who have been part of the varsity sports program at the University of Michigan from the 1864 school year through the present.

From the time the student Football Association was first organized in 1873, informal games and practice sessions were held on the "playground" on the north edge of campus.

For over a century, the game program has been a part of Michigan's football tradition. Whether on a simple scorecard or a 180-page volume, the art and design of the program cover have promoted and celebrated the team and the university.

The ongoing rivalry between The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan was established the first time the teams went head-to-head in 1897.

From the second modern Olympic Games held in Paris in 1900 to the 2022 games in Beijin, the University of Michigan has made its mark in Olympic competition.

Gender differences are literally built into the architecture of the Michigan Union and League buildings. This digital exhibit explores the ways in which the University envisioned separate zones of campus for men and women in the early twentieth century. 

In 1870, Madelon Stockwell became the first woman to attend the University of Michigan, but others followed.. These are the stories of the pioneering women who proved they belonged at U-M too.

Willis Ward is indelibly identified with the 1934 University of Michigan vs. Georgia Tech football game in Ann Arbor, during which he was benched for being Black. This exhibit goes beyond the game into his life and legacy.

In 1924, more than 3,000 female alumni and former students of U-M replied to an Alumnae Council survey, asking them for an update on their occupations and U-M memories dating back to 1870. You can search and view the digitized surveys, which are a part of the Alumni Association Records.

Many publications archived at the Bentley – for example, the Michiganensian and Ann Arbor city directories – have been scanned and added to HathiTrust. Using the HathiTrust collections linked here makes it easier to search a range of dates, rather than one year at a time.

These records of the Board’s meetings and official actions begin in 1837. The full text is searchable through MLibrary, and is a good place to look for information about University finances, faculty hirings and promotions, and the establishment or reorganization of schools and departments.

The Michigan Daily student newspaper has been digitized from 1890-2014. New issues are added every year. This collection is fully searchable, and individual pages can be downloaded for free.

This selection of photos was donated by former Michigan Daily photographers to represent their best work. Most of the images date from the 1960s and 1970s.

This page, maintained by the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, has information on LSA classes from 1982 through 2010.

The President’s Office maintains lists of honorary degree recipients from 1852 to the present. They are organized by year and by name.

Search this database for files on alumni and former students who attended U-M and who died prior to 1965. You can request to see the entire file in our Reading Room or order a copy.

The Bentley has digitized some full collections or large segments of collections and made them available here. Examples include early records of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and a survey of early female graduates of the University. Check the “online content” tag for digital material dealing with more specific subjects – like our Civil War collections.

Interviews, musical performances, private recordings or public broadcasts – drawn from a wide range of collections – are shared here for online search or streaming. Increasingly, this material can also be found through the Bentley’s finding aids, which offer more context.

When material comes to the Bentley already in a digital format, it’s stored in Deep Blue, U-M’s institutional repository. This material can also be found through the Bentley’s finding aids, which offer more context.

The Bentley has been archiving websites from the University of Michigan, as well as from individuals and organizations from around the state, since 2010. Here you can search for certain words or URLs, or browse a list of sites to see how they have evolved over time.

Many Bentley collections include photographs, maps, drawings, or other items with a strong visual element. We’ve scanned a selection of these items and shared the digital images here for online searching and download.

The Bentley holds many collections that contain letters, diaries, photographs, and more related to the Civil War. We have digitized the microfilm from 157 of these collections and made them available online. You can search or browse by by author, title or subject.

This database contains issues of the Detroit Jewish News and its predecessor publication, the Detroit Jewish Chronicle, from 1916 to 2018.

This database contains digitized issues of the Michigan Citizen from 1978-1994. The Michigan Citizen was an African American newspaper based in Benton Harbor, Muskegon, and Highland Park, Michigan.

The “Polar Bear Expedition” was a U.S. military action in the Archangel province of Russia at the end of World War I. Because many of the troops involved were from Michigan, the Bentley has collected material related to the expedition. This digital collection includes a searchable roster of soldiers, digitized material, and links to more resources.

A searchable database lists the names and years of attendance of every known African American student who attended the University for any length of time from 1853 until 1980. Includes visualizations, stories and other data for an in-depth look at African American experiences at U-M.