Sawyer Silberman is at home within the yearbook storage room, located in the main office of the Main Building. He flips open pages of Montclair High School’s yearbooks, ranging from 1920 to 2024, musical records, and the original student news publication (pre-Mountaineer), The Bulletin. Silberman is the founder and leader of MHS’s first-ever student-led historical record digitization and preservation project, and he is giving The Mountaineer an exclusive tour of his workspace. 

Prior to starting the digitization project, Silberman did a genealogical project for his family. Scanning hundreds of photos, some dating back over a century, Silberman discovered an interest for historical preservation. At the same time, when he was a sophomore, Silberman was an active member of the Photography Club, advised by Mr. Gerdes, who is also the Amphitheatre advisor. He felt drawn to Mr. Gerdes’s collection of old MHS yearbooks. 

 “It was last year when I officially approached Mr. Gerdes about digitizing the yearbooks, and he said it was a great idea. So, it took a few months. I first started with building the website, which was a lot of work, and then, eventually, we managed to get a hold of Miss Glasgow at the main office, and she was more than happy to give us access to this storage room. All the yearbooks are here, and they happened to just have organized them.” Said Silberman

After that, according to Silberman, it was just history from there (pun intended). 

Silberman takes us past the scanning “cradle,” set up to help with digitization. Walking us through the process, he explains how he and Mr. Gerdes scan the pages of the yearbooks using an X-shaped DIY contraption. Then, once he has the scans, he takes them, numbers them, makes them into a PDF, and uploads them to the Amphitheatre website. 

Going through the pages of the yearbooks, Silberman remarks on the changes MHS has undergone throughout its storied history. Examining yearbooks from as early as the 1920s, Silberman notes how times have changed.

“One thing that I think is funny is that you have everyone’s portraits, and they all have quotes next to them, but no one actually got to choose what quote was next to their name.
It was actually the yearbooks, the yearbook staff, who chose it” Silberman said. He flips to the page of Jenny Greenberg, from 1922, who has the quote, “She is of still and serious thought,” and to the page of Mary Good, nicknamed “Tootsie” (seemingly, for her feisty nature).

Silberman notes differences in art style between the different yearbooks. “1930 and 1932, these are very emblematic of the Art Deco style—this metallic finish, this font, these lines are very geometric. You have the 1960s when there’s not necessarily a style, but it’s more minimalist, and they start to use these sans serif fonts” Silberman said. 

Historical preservation within MHS is important for posterity, and Silberman’s passion on the subject is evident in his view on the present. “Yeah, I feel like a lot of people criticize how old our building is and how it’s falling apart, and all of that. I think doing this is important because we can look at where we come from with these documents and piece together this story. Well, one thing that’s so great about this school being so old is that these [yearbooks] probably have not left this room in many decades. So we still have all of this. and there’s just so much history” Silberman said.

In terms of historical preservation in general, Silberman said, “I think it’s just important to know where we come from and it helps us learn for the future, what we want to do.” He explains that the 1930 yearbook “has a bunch of crazy signatures, like Clary Anderson’s signature from when he graduated. So many different hands have touched these [yearbooks], and it’s just amazing. You know, I’m in awe every time I go here, because it’s just so cool” said Silberman. 

To work on this project, Silberman founded the Amphitheatre Club, which is currently working on digitizing some of the older yearbooks, music records from old concerts put on by MHS’s band, and old copies of the Bulletin. 

At the end of the tour, he gives us his point of view on the digitization project and why he thinks that students should get involved in the Amphitheatre Club. “I think it’s a really great opportunity to really interact with actual historical documents beyond just doing a DBQ [document-based question] or something in your history class, because there’s not a lot of opportunities, especially for high school students in our area, and it’s very hard to get access to things like these yearbooks. My hope is that this club outlives me, because I think that it’s a really important project and something that people find very meaningful,” Silberman said.