CORRECTION APPENDED BELOW
Purdue University's yearbook, "The Debris," which was first published in 1889, will fold after this year's edition. The university is just one of many around the country that will stop printing a yearbook because of a steep decline in sales that began a decade ago.
The Journal & Courier in LaFeyette, Ind., reports:
Lori Brooks, yearbook committee chairwoman for the College Media
Advisers organization, said there are about 80 college yearbooks left
in the country, down from about 100 last year. The recent creation of
social networking Web sites such as Facebook, is one reason, but the
decline really started much earlier.
"Student yearbooks are
trying to sell history to people who really aren't interested yet,"
Brooks said. "In their high school book, they can go to the index and
find everyone they know. There's no guarantee that you or your friends
are in the college book."
Students are counting on social
networking sites to preserve their memories now, Brooks said, but those
sites are constantly changing. She said people may be disappointed a
decade or so from now to realize they don't have the memories they
thought they had been archiving.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled Lafayette, the city in Indiana.
I just wanted to clarify information Lori Brooks gave in...
