ZAMA YEARBOOKS ONLINE
Putting together this site with all the Zama yearbooks has
been almost a 30 year effort. I have had
Extraordinary help by Carolyn Zeigler (RIP) who tirelessly copied most of the
books at her library where she was librarian by day, and camp zama yearbook
copier at night. She spent many years laboring over it, copying one section and
sending it to me, where I would erase the signatures and comments and try to put
them in order that was the original book. It was a learning process. (It took us
almost 6 months to scan/transfer/edit/upload a single book with 14.4k dialup
MODEMS :) And since dial up was so
slow, we made the pictures small for folks to be able to read at a reasonable
rate. We did this yearbook site from dial up modems, to the 1-2 megabit cable
days. Now I have 450 megabits download it would be easy to download big pictures
of all the yearbooks.
When we started, it took months to put
together one yearbook. Also, most people had 640x480 CRT displays
and we sized the photos accordingly, and of course as the years went by, screen
sizes got bigger, which is why as you go higher in year, the bigger the photos.
Carolyn, very unfortunately departed unexpectedly and way too early and I lost a
dear friend. We had emailed weekly and talked on the phone for almost 20 years
and she was gone (RIP).
Some time after that, I contacted the yearbook staff and they sent several
copies of the books to me, but only up to 2010 so that is where it ends now.
So, this site was built by hand, receiving books from alumni that had them,
Carolyn scanning them and sending them to me to whitewash, resize and renumber
to make a ‘book’ from them. And that seemed like a never-ending task.
After 2000, students and ZAHS staff would email me scanned
yearbooks which I gratefully accepted. Thanks.
And disaster struck – my site was wiped by the ISP owners. I have multiple
backups, of course, but I had always wanted to go back and use ONE single
program for presentation of the books – paging through them etc. never got
around to it – so I am going to do it on the new site here.
Rick pemble ‘72
rick.pemble@outlook.com
2021 Update:
Due to unforseen circumstances, the rebuild of the site was delayed. A volunteer
rebuilt the site with it's original look and feel, but with reduced
complexity. The first prototype was completed in late 2020. After additional
unforseen delays, the rebuild was completed in early 2021, and testing began
shortly thereafter, but was never quite completed. It became apparent that while
the rebuild helped, there were some yearbooks that could not be recoverd from
the earlier ISP issue and would not be rebuildable. Those are listed on the main
page as being not available.
So give thanks to dearly departed Carolyn Zeigler for all her help, and a few
others that copied their books and sent them to me – I will add their names to
each book as I get it posted. It save me a lot of work getting a softcopy – a
rare pleasant surprise.
At this point, it also became necessary
to request that ZAA take over hosting of the site and seeking volunteers to help with
testing, maintenance, and general upkeep of the site in a more sustainable way.
ZAA has graciously accepted the request, and has been actively
seeking assistance in this area, particularly in helping obtain yearbooks or
better yet, digital images of yearbook pages.
If you would like to help with the upkeep
and maintenance of the site and have HTML, CSS, and javascript skills, please contact
ZAA leadership.
If you would like to help by
providing page scans from the missing yearbooks, all we would request you do
is scan the fron and back covers, and all of the pages separately. Name the
image files in the following fashion:
That's it! The volunteer helpers will take care of it from there! At least, that's the plan for now. It will take some time to get this all into
place, but it should happen sometime this year!
Thanks for your continued patience and support over the years!