These Harvard Coop diaries mark the beginnings of my serious obsession with little black notebooks. I started using them at around the age of 9. Before that, I’d had some 3 x 5″ spiral notebooks, and I liked to get the little Hallmark month-to-a-page planners that drugstores would give out for free, but I barely knew how to write, let alone what to write in them. The Harvard coop notebooks came along at a point when I could control my own handwriting pretty well, so I could use them for more than just scribbling. But I think I would have fallen in love with them even if I had been younger– they awakened a deep love for little black notebooks which has evolved over the years, but never fundamentally changed.

I don’t remember the exact circumstances of getting my first “Coop book,” as I used to call them (one syllable and rhymes with “loop”). I had a childless great-aunt who worked for Harvard, and as a member of the Coop (the campus store for books, records, and other items, which still exists, though it is now operated by Barnes & Noble), she got these diaries for free every year. I guess she noticed my interest in notebooks and since she didn’t use the diaries, thought I might like to have one. I was so thrilled with this gift that she went looking through her desk drawers and found me another diary from a prior year. And then, over the next couple of years, she gave me the new ones as they came along.

I’m an aunt myself now, and can appreciate how much she must have enjoyed giving me these notebooks. I’m not sure I’ve ever succeeded in giving my own niece and nephew such an exciting gift, but I know how good it feels to make a kid happy with something simple. My great-aunt saw me using these notebooks constantly, and often carrying them in a little pocketbook she’d also given me. Everyone in my large extended family probably remembers me always having one of these Harvard Coop diaries in my hand at that age, and when I have pulled out other notebooks in more recent years, sometimes people say “you always liked little black notebooks…”

Like other promotional diaries, these notebooks have pages with for phone numbers and expense records, as well as other extra information in them. Rather than lists of city populations or area codes, the info pages relate to the academic calendar at Harvard and MIT, and the products and services of the Coop, which were extensive. The 1979-1980 diary is the first to mention “computers” as part of the office equipment category, which up to that point had only noted calculators and typewriters. Compact discs join records and tapes in 1985-1986. VCRs are first mentioned in 1986-1987. I underlined the departments I thought I’d like to shop in.

The Harvard Coop diaries run from July through July to accommodate academic schedules. It’s interesting to note the changes in how they were made– the 1973 version had a nice textured cover, and other variations in texture occurred in later years. In 1980, they started adding “The Coop” in a logo font on the cover. Until 1980-1981, the cover was removable, so you could tuck things in the pockets, but afterwards, the cover was glued on. The plastic covers on the oldest diaries are stuck on now, but they were obviously meant to have the notebook only tucked into the back pocket. I preferred to have the cover tucked on both sides, even if it obscured the yearly calendar.

I used the Harvard Coop diaries very intensely in the first few years, but by 1981-1982 the entries are more sporadic. I seem to have stopped using them in the fall of 1983 as everything after that point is blank. The last 3 diaries are completely unused. (I had started buying other slightly larger diaries in 1981 and was using those exclusively as of 1984.) I never use notebooks this small anymore, but I suppose it’s because I myself am bigger. The Coop books look tiny next to my pocket Moleskine and Nolty diary, but proportionally, I think they fit my childhood hands about the way my favorite 3.5 x 5.5″ size does now.

I love having these notebooks in my collection as they are the first true diaries I ever kept. I didn’t always write entries in each day, but I did during certain periods, and I’ve found things that I wouldn’t have remembered otherwise. In 1979, I noted that I was staying with my grandmother, and that my great aunt came and took me to play mini golf and go bowling, and that I went to stay at her apartment for a couple of days. At the end of the week, there is a note dated 1981, saying I couldn’t believe I hadn’t mentioned my grandmother’s illness during those days in 1979. My 2-years-older self noted that it had been very scary and that I felt bad being there while she was sick. She must have been feverish and delirious for a while, and I wrote that she’d told me about some weird dreams she’d been having, including something about a fish made of carrots!

Today, more than 40 years later, I vividly remember many details about the times I stayed at my grandmother’s house, so it was surprising to discover a memory I’d lost. With my Coop books, I was already learning to record my life; already revisiting and reflecting on what I had recorded, and what I hadn’t. These habits continue to this day.