"The traditional yearbook is in fact in jeopardy," Linda Puntney, the director of student publications at Kansas State University, said.
At a time when the social Web has changed the way that students record history and stay in touch, Ms. Puntney said that yearbook advisers cannot stick their heads in the sand but instead need to embrace change and find out how to reach students in better ways.
"People buy a yearbook because they want a capsulized view of their year at college," Kathy Lawrence, yearbook committee chair for College Media Advisers, Inc., said. "Facebook and MySpace capture the fun craze at the moment [but] people can't necessarily trust what they read there."
Ms. Lawrence said that she has heard people state that social networks are the final nail in the coffin for yearbooks, but she disagrees.
People who purchase yearbooks have a far different motivation than those who rely on social networks for their memories, she said. Ms. Lawrence pointed to Facebook's highly successful photo application, stating that the quality of online pictures don't begin to touch what yearbooks can offer.
More and more yearbooks are marketed to parents instead of students, Ms. Lawrence said, because students don't place enormous value on their yearbooks until decades later in life.
Mrs. Puntney, said that fresh alumni have frequently begun to call the university and request to purchase yearbooks from their time on campus.
"The Royal Purple yearbook is ... more in-depth than anything else on campus," she said. "The concept of the yearbook is not threatened; I think it's strong. But our delivery system is what threatens us," she said, warning that yearbooks needed to become more modern.
"The single most used archival item we have at the university is the Royal Purple yearbook," she said. "We are the one place where you can get the whole story of the year in one location."
Lori Brooks, the associate director of the yearbook at the University of Oklahoma, agreed.
"You can have a vigorous Facebook profile that has recorded your collegiate career but there's no guarantee. If software changes you could lose all of that," she said. "The beauty of a book is that it will last forever."
Rebecca Desjardins, yearbook adviser at Virginia Wesleyan College, said that her school's alumni organization has looked at the yearbook as an important tool for the alumni base.
"People give to their institutions because they have fond memories," she said. "A yearbook is just a tool to remind them of that."
Ms.
Desjardins said that Virginia Wesleyan lacks a college historian and
that the yearbook has been there to serve that purpose, but starting
next year, when the yearbook ceases printing, history will be lost.
Mrs. Brooks said that universities that have dropped yearbook programs will lament the loss of history in years to come when alumni return for reunions or want to share their memories with the next generation.
"It's like your institutional history just stops when your yearbook dies," Mrs. Brooks said.
She said that in some cases prominent public figures from university histories fail to be recorded in time.
"I hate to think that [yearbooks] won't exist anymore...I'd hate to see it go away," Ms. Lawrence said. "It's a great resource, but you have to sell enough to pay the bills."
Students who use social networks don't get the full picture, Halley Ofner, editor-in-chief of the American University Talon, said. She stated that more people need to realize that "yearbooks are more than just picture books... They're historical documents."
Ms. Ofner said that college yearbooks may eventually reach the point where they are no longer student-run as more content is moved online.
"I think you're going to see more page cutting, which really makes me sad," she said. "I tend to get a little passionate about the yearbook."
Richard Stoebe, director of communications for yearbook publisher Jostens, said that the print book is here to stay despite the digital revolution.
"The yearbook really presents the story of the school year; certainly we believe it's a more permanent keepsake," he said.
Mr. Stoebe said that while many universities have maintained the tradition of yearbooks, campuses that have maintained strong journalism programs and a high affinity for their school have consistently produced books that are exceptionally strong.
Caroline McCarthy, author of "The Social," a technology blog at CNet, said she doesn't believe that yearbooks will be going away any time in the near future, namely, she said, because school yearbooks serve as a showcase of the best pictures of the year.
While there are thousands of photos from each school uploaded to social networks, Ms. McCarthy said that those published in school annuals represent the cream of the crop.
In addition to lowering costs, Ms. McCarthy said that for the yearbook industry to survive, the quality of customer service and printing time would have to improve.
"They can't get complacent with charging people a whole lot for something that probably isn't worth what [they] paid for it," she said.
Ms. McCarthy said that the web made dynamic content commonplace. Users can easily share their comments on photos and tag friends in albums. However, she said that Facebook profiles will never have the sentimental value attributed to items like yearbooks.
"Our society is just different and our attention is pulled in a hundred different directions," Ms. Desjardins said. "I guess you don't miss it until it's gone."
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