The Cenobium, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine's yearbook, has been digitized and is now part of the LSU Libraries digital collections. In an effort to provide wider access to these records, Lisa Juengling, Archivist at the Veterinary Medicine Library, digitized the yearbooks with guidance from LSU Libraries' Gabe Harrell and Rachel Tillay.
A young Mike V with an SVM student, 1990 Cenobium.
In 1977, LSU's School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) graduated its first class, and the first edition of the yearbook, Cenobium, was published. It was aptly named. Cenobium derives from the Greek word, Koinobios, meaning "living in communion with others." In scientific usage, cenobium refers to "a colony of cells or organisms held together by a common investment." It was an especially fitting title for a publication that chronicled the daily life and special events of a relatively small, cohesive group of students. It was published for the last time in 1990.
Naturally, animals figure prominently in the pages of each edition and the photos run the gamut from delightful to grim. There are pages, for example, that contain photos of students' pets, complete with their "first and last" names, and conversely, those that depict the stark clinical reality of anatomy labs and cadavers.
The books also document a student body that was particularly social. Faculty roasts, talent shows, spring barbeques, crawfish boils, Halloween parties, intramural athletics, and rodeos all show evidence of a group of scholars that recognized the need for respite amid the rigor.
The LSU Libraries includes the LSU Library and the adjacent Hill Memorial Library. Together, the libraries contain more than 4 million volumes and provide additional resources such as expert staff, technology, services, electronic resources, and facilities that advance research, teaching, and learning across every discipline.