Student publications have been published at the university since 1888. Various offices around Ihe university collected copies of the publications and donated them to the University Archives. In 1960, reference librarian Bert A. Thompson made an effort to organize and categorize the various publications.

The Creative Arts Magazines series contains eight different publications, and features several types of art and creative writing, such as photography, sketches, drawings, poetry, short stories, opinion pieces, interviews, and articles on various topics. Literary and creative arts magazines have been produced by students for several decades. The earliest in this collection was in 1953 with The Totem. It was created by members of Phi Delta Epsilon, the national honorary fraternity m journalism. Later it was issued as a creative arts magazine. The next additions were in 1965 with the Plaintiff and Sophia. In 1965 The Totem and Plaintiffwere merged. The Plaintiff was intended to "feature current campus opinion, with a format that would allow ideas of a social, political, religious, or moral nature" to be considered. Sophia was originally published in book format and each story was footnoted with a bibliography. With the fall 1971 issue, Sophia was changed to IS: A Scholarly Journal of Inquiry.

The Muse became the Minnesota River Review in January, 1995. Mankato Studies in English was "a serial devoted to scholarly and critical studies and reports of research. Various disciplines of the college may from time to time (be) present." The papers in the second volume were given at the J.R.R. Tolkein Conference in October 1966 at Mankato State College. Some papers were presented by speakers from academic institutions from across the United States.

The first student news publication was called The Student, in a magazine format. It was a monthly paper published by the students of the Mankato Normal School and sold on a subscription basis. The Student ran for three years from 1888 until 1891. The name was then changed to the Mankatonian. The official school newspaper began in 1926 under the name Among Ourselves, and in 1933 its name was changed to College Spirit and then in 1935 to College Reporter. In 1971 the newspaper changed its name to The Reporter.

The first annual or yearbook published as a separate item was that of 1910. For several years prior to that date, specific issues of the school magazine, Mankatonian, were devoted to the junior and senior classes, usually being the last two issues of every year. The title of the annual yearbooks changed several times until 1921, when Katonian was selected. The yearbook was published under that name until its last issue in 1981. The 1972 was the last official yearbook. The 1974 yearbook was published by the Mankato State Student Association. The 1978-1981 yearbooks were published by the Centennial Student Union, and other than the senior photographs, the format and photographs were virtually the same in each volume.

Information for this finding aid was obtained from a report prepared by reference librarian Bert A. Thompson, and notes in the accession folders of the publications.