The Lantern is the next chapter in the journey of the John Brown University Yearbook. Begun in 1926, the yearbook has gone by multiple names: Jebroco, Pioneer, and most recently, Nesher. As of 2022, with the end of the JBU Communications Department, the yearbook found itself rehomed under Archives and it seemed a new name was in order.
For a few years, Archives put out a monthly publication, The Lantern. The tagline was “Illuminating History”, and that seemed to be a worthy goal of this new adventure in Archives. I had absolutely no experience in yearbooks and I knew that the publication was going to need to transform so that it might dovetail more naturally with what I did know how to do – capture the stories of today so that they can be shared with people tomorrow. I reclaimed the name for the new publication, and armed with a beginning, we set out to create something which would capture the experience of JBU for not only the students who experienced it, but for future historians curious about life at JBU.
