Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

Do you have a stash of old yearbooks? Lanny Nunn is posting excerpts from “Tiger Lily” yearbooks from way back. He has posted some from recent years, too. You can find pages from them on Facebook pages Port Allegany Remember when… and port Allegany Then and Now.

Yearbooks from other schools are fascinating, too, for their glimpses of schools and students and courses, customs and social life and how things used to be done.

A long-ago photo of a long-ago Pres Club tells us that it was a new organization, its functions having been part of the curriculum, in the past. Apparently some English course or several courses had incorporated the various tasks and skills involved in putting out “The Bugle” twice a month.

Here are the Press Club members, seated in unnatural poses around three tables and standing in front of bookshelves in the library, not looking at the camera but trying to obey a photographer who want to make sure their faces are showing.

In other old “Tiger Lily” issues we also see the Press Club, and the Steno Club, and realize they collaborate on “The Bugle.” We see the technology they used.

In the Commercial track students learned typing, bookkeeping, shorthand and using various office machines. Before there were copiers there were spirit duplicators or Dittos, and mimeographs.

Mimeographs produced black print and line art on whatever paper used. The paper had to have some tooth (not be too smooth or calendared), and was heavy if there was to be two-sided printing.

Mimeographs used stencils, which were sheets of ink-proof material that could be “cut” by typing, or with a hand-held stylus.

In one photo I see Dick Thwing cutting a stencil with some artwork—maybe a drawing by one of the artists involved in publishing “The Bugle.” He is working over a light table, tracing the lines onto the stencil.

The trick was to cut almost, but not entirely, through the stencil, so it would not fall apart. Stencil typers tried not to cut holes when they typed o or 0 or g or a or 8 or 9 or d or b. A typo had to be corrected by dabbing on a liquid that smelled like ether, letting it dry, then retyping.

Think of the generations of printing and publishing technology that have come and gone since then! Thermal copiers supplanted dittos and mimeos, and were followed by Xerography. Printing in offices and schools and homes has been revolutionized repeatedly, and gone digital. If multiple copies of anything are wanted for a class or activity or by any school organization, there are various ways of obtaining them, and all the ways are quick and easy compared with the methods that were in use “back when.”

Every “Tiger Lily” I have seen shows the Tiger Lily Staff, which functioned like a club, and had as its purpose the publication of that year’s yearbook. It had editors, writers, artists, designers, members who sold ads and some who worked in circulation (selling as many copies of the book as possible). For many years a commercial photography studio was involved, although some snapshots could be incorporated too.

Likely Josten, a company with quite a name in the business of producing yearbooks and similar books, was the company involved here most of those years. It used to do much of its printing and binding in Pennsylvania, but no longer does. These days the physical operation can be anywhere; the copy and art are transmitted as easily as my copy and photos get to a news room and thence to a press room somewhere.

There’s much to be learned in putting a yearbook together, as each year’s “Tiger Lily” staff can attest. And the books themselves are quite costly. Somebody makes money on every one, huh?

The inside of a yearbook could be laid out and printed with software and equipment the school may own or lease now. If it needs another kind of printer, those are not so expensive as used to be the case.

As for binding, there are numerous options. The book could be “perfect bound” using a thermal binder similar to one I have. To produce a “casebound” book, a hard cover is clamped onto the perfect bound insides.

Covers can be fabric, leatherette, embossed or debossed, foil lettered and imprinted, padded, and otherwise fancied up. Some such effects can be applied in-house, some must be ordered.

Just as there are many companies that will produce your novel or how-to book to order, and do it online, there are companies that will make yearbooks to order, other than the ones that have had a near monopoly for years. So that is another option, not available when high school annuals of earlier times were big projects requiring much work, with their student staffs struggling to sell ads and books enough to cover the cost.

Doing much of it in-house would provide valuable experience for students, and keep funds in local treasuries.

School news and communications are gaining the immediacy and social networking features we are accustomed to in the Communication (or Information) Age. We may not see “The Bugle” again, and the Press Club may nevermore meet at Port High. But the “Tiger Lily” could be a local product.