LJWorld.com

The days of the yearbook may be waning.

The traditional yearbook is facing challenges from the economy and social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Several high schools and colleges across the country have seen a downturn in sales.

In Lawrence, though, high school yearbook sales are bucking that trend.

Heather Lawrenz, adviser for Lawrence High's yearbook Red & Black, said that may be because yearbooks are a historical record, while social networking sites highlight the present. She compared the plight of yearbooks with the way newspapers battled the rise of radio and television.

"I think yearbooks are much in that same situation, in that there will always be a business for an item that stays around 50 years," she said.

"A yearbook is a tradition," said Red & Black editor Sara Fevurly. LHS distributed 2007-08 yearbooks this week, and Fevurly said students are enthusiastic about the yearbook.

At Free State High School, yearbook adviser Laurie Folsom said sales have been consistent in the two years she has overseen the publication.

"Our feeling is that the yearbooks are something that last," she said. "Facebook and MySpace are popular now. There may be a new version of Facebook or MySpace a few years down the road. Yearbooks are forever."

But at Kansas University, yearbook sales are adversely affected by the array of Internet-based tools, according to Tom Johnson, adviser to The Jayhawker, which sold about 1,000 copies last year.

"It's already less personal than the high school yearbook," he said, due to a large student population and the fact that many college yearbooks don't include individual student photographs.

Johnson said the photo-sharing Web site Flickr provides a way for students to stay connected to school events that are otherwise chronicled in the yearbook.

"You can find most pictures you'd find in a yearbook on the Web," he said. "There's not so much nostalgia or permanence surrounding a yearbook as there used to be."

Lawrenz said sales at LHS have remained relatively consistent, but thinks a slowing economy and district activity fees contribute to any decline in sales.

"I think the addition of pay-to-play, rising gas costs, rising costs at the grocery store, those impact our sales more than social networking," she said.

Even if sales are flat, yearbook advisers are working to improve their product. Last year, LHS' yearbook featured a new week-by-week recap, rather than a traditional layout, separating school and extracurricular activities. At KU, Johnson said The Jayhawker editors are reviewing ways to innovate the yearbook using multimedia tools.