Yearbook Staff Extend Efforts to the Internet

Many Walsworth customers have taken the plunge into the World Wide Web and set up home pages for their school or yearbook class. And while they have different reasons for their work on the Web, all are excited at the possibilities this new medium offers.

Debbie Carrico, from Collierville High School, Collierville, Tenn., has used her resources as yearbook adviser to set up home pages for the entire school district. Collierville’s home page offers a look at the school’s course catalog, handbook and information on all the school’s clubs and organizations.

I do this as a service so everyone can know about the school,” said Carrico. “We are the fastest growing city in Tennessee, and people come to the page to get information about the school.”

Carrico also sponsors Collierville’s computer club, and so has a ready-made staff to update the web page.

Jan Hensel, publications adviser at Liberty High School, Liberty, Mo., first got connected to the Internet in 1995 through a state-sponsored education program. The staff found a program on the ‘Net which told how to create Web pages, and within two days they were putting newspaper stories on-line.

Hensel has now instituted an independent study program in which one student serves as webmaster for the semester. The web page currently contains information about the yearbook class and details of the yearbook’s publication, as well as information on awards and honors the book has received.

I don’t know how much of the yearbook we’ll be able to put up,” she said. “The problem with the yearbook is that the files are secret until it is released. We don’t want to publicize the cover or the yearbook ahead of time.”

Hensel would like to be able to put the entire yearbook online, leaving it up for three years and then putting it on CD.

I don’t think (online yearbooks) will replace the hard copy, because you can’t write in them,” she said. “But actual copies of the yearbook are hard to come by.”

Jim Jordan, of Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, Calif., would eventually like to use the Decamhian’s web page to give a behind-the-scenes look at yearbook production. Currently the page contains staff information and a look back at covers from past years.

I want people to come here and learn more about the process,” he said. “I also want to give individual students more exposure for what they’ve done.”

Jordan said that having the entire yearbook online would be nice, but that it is not his ultimate goal for the page. He would rather go more in-depth with individual spreads, explaining why they staff did what they did.

“We only have so much time,” he said. “As the medium is now, our prime goal has to be to put out the print book.”