When the Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume was ratified on 16 May 1895, its authors charged the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume with the responsibilities of approving new Faculty colors and of assigning unique hood lining patterns to every college or university that adopted the 1895 Code. The Intercollegiate Bureau, affiliated with the Cotrell & Leonard firm and led by Gardner Cotrell Leonard at that firm, diligently compiled information about the school colors used by every college and university in the United States, and would assign a singular hood lining pattern to each one that contacted the Bureau or purchased hoods from Cotrell & Leonard.

Until its bankruptcy in 1980, Cotrell & Leonard and the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume did not readily provide their hood lining database to the public or to competing academic costume firms. However, partial lists of hood lining assignments were published in a 1902 newspaper, 1910 and 1918 encyclopedia articles written by Gardner Cotrell Leonard, and two books written in 1923 and 1924 by a British researcher named Frank W. Haycraft called The Degrees and Hoods of the World’s Universities & Colleges.

In 1927 and 1948, Haycraft would publish complete lists of hood lining information obtained from the Intercollegiate Bureau, and these databases, along with information compiled by researcher Kevin Sheard in 1962 and 1970, a partial list of hood lining information from Cotrell & Leonard in David Lockmiller’s Scholars on Parade (1969), and an updated edition of The Degrees and Hoods of the World’s Universities & Colleges from 1972 make up the bulk of the hood lining information preserved by the Intercollegiate Registry of Academic Costume in this website.

More detailed information about each of these sources can be found here.