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ATTLEBORO, Mass. (AP) — A tattered, dark blue cover of the Tattletale binds together life at Attleboro High School from 1926.
Its pages are worn, and there are far more words than photos.
The reader is presented with poems and songs, short stories, even jokes. Advertisements from local sponsors offer well-wishes to students. And, there are black and white portraits of the school's 101 graduates.
Ninety years later, that yearbook is a treasured window to the past, the only way the modern eye can see a bygone time at AHS.
And now, it's online.
For years, residents and alumni could only access the yearbook's rich history through the alumni association or if they had a copy of their own.
But in 2015, high school librarian Lisa Ryder partnered with the Boston Public Library to have 79 yearbooks — and the school's literary magazine "The Blue Owl," which at times served as the yearbook for the year, too — from 1926 to 2014 digitized with a state grant through the Digital Commonwealth initiative.
"Sometimes we'd get calls from people trying to find someone or look for photos from an event or plan a reunion, and they'd have to come in and look through all of the yearbooks themselves," Ryder said. "But, this makes it much more accessible. Now, they can just flip through them online."
The initiative is a statewide effort to create a digital public library of papers, books and images unique to Massachusetts history, project manager Tom Blake said.
In 2010, the Boston Public Library received a grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners that allowed it to offer free digitization service to other organizations looking to create an online archive of historic materials.
When the grants ended in 2013, the project was able to survive, thanks to funding from the state.
And, yearbooks have turned out to be the most popular request, Blake said.
"When people apply, we tell them, 'Pick something that you want to share with the world,'" he said. "We were actually pretty surprised at the number of yearbook requests we received.
But, I think it's a reflection of what a yearbook is. It's a way for people to connect to their past and to their history — and yearbooks only get printed once."
Attleboro was the only area school district to take part in the initiative, although it joined about 100 other school districts statewide who have used the service.
Yearbook advisors from Norton, North Attleboro, Mansfield and the King Philip Regional School District said they had not heard about the project, but might consider taking part in the future.
Ironically, in a digital age where technology allows images of yellowed, crumbling pages to be archived forever, school districts have resisted moving to online-only versions of the iconic high school memento.
There's just something about a hard-copy book.
Kara Immonen, a yearbook advisor at Norton High School, said this year the school's publishing company Herff Jones offered a digital yearbook to all students who purchased a hard copy. And, while students seemed excited by the digital version, Immonen doesn't see it replacing the traditional yearbook anytime soon.
"The tradition of signing each other's yearbooks still seems like it will keep the print version alive," she said.
Other advisors say there's value in having something physical to hold onto for years to come.
"For most of their lives, (these kids) have been in school. Many of them have known one another since Pre-K and 'growing-away' senior year is a huge deal for them," Attleboro advisor Nancy Krieger said. "As a bibliophile I hope we never lose the tradition of a yearbook one can hold and sign as a keepsake."
North Attleboro's advisor Sandra McGrory compared a digital yearbook to increasingly popular e-books.
"Sure, we embrace them," she said. "But, it's like that special copy of the book you have on your coffee table — you don't want a digital copy of that.
"We're all living in a digital age, but I don't think yearbooks will go away completely. A lot of people like going back 20 years and looking at their old yearbooks or looking through old pictures. What happens if your digital copy suddenly isn't there anymore?"
North Attleboro offered a digital version of its yearbook, but at an added cost — and it didn't quite take with the students. The school didn't sell any digital copies this year.
Norton senior Cassandra Phillips said that while a digital yearbook would be convenient, and likely cheaper, "it's just not the same."
"I recently stumbled upon my yearbook from the fifth grade, and it was nice to look through it and see all of my old teachers and the old signatures," she said. "I think it's nice to find something like that unexpectedly. You can't do that if it's only online."
Still, the advisors said an online archive of past yearbooks would be helpful in preserving the school's history and would allow area graduates who have moved across the country to access a piece of their past.
And, that's the goal of the Digital Commonwealth initiative, Blake said.
"This is a preservation issue. Yearbooks have this huge sentimental value to them," he said. "The yearbook is static, and I think that's always going to stay true. But this just enhances their value ... this initiative is a new treasure trove of our history."
And in Attleboro, it starts with a tattered, dark blue copy of the Tattletale, dating to 1926.
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Information from: The (Attleboro, Mass.) Sun Chronicle, http://www.thesunchronicle.com
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