Sign My Yearbook?

For all of its quirks and occasional inaccuracies, I've found ZooChat to be a useful tool for connecting with other zoo lovers, as well as to get updates on what's going on in zoos around the world.  Such information was a lot harder to come by when I was a kid.  When it did come, it was a huge source of excitement, to see what was going on in the rest of the world.  My favorite annual surprise would be when the college library would get the latest issue of International Zoo Yearbook.

Published by the Zoological Society of London, with the first issue going to press in 1960, IZY was a hefty tome produced each year that collected scholarly articles from across the zoo world.  Each issue was divided into three sections.  The first section was dedicated to articles to a specific topic, which varied from issue to issue.  Sometimes it was taxonomic, such as "Bears" or "Penguins" or "Reptiles."  Other times, it was about a general theme, such as "Horticulture" or "Animal Trade and Transport."   The next section would feature general papers about a variety of topics, such as new exhibits or significant breedings.  The third section would be a reference, featuring the holdings of rare species in zoos around the world.  If you were a zoo director in the 1970s, this is where you would go to find out who had what, in case you wanted to make a trade.

Sitting in a library chair and paging through a copy of IZY - the older issues bound in cloth, the newer ones with glossy photo covers - I always felt like I was privy to some insider secrets, and that the silverbacks in the room were sharing with me their wisdom.  It was a rare chance to get detailed information about what new cutting edge developments were taking place around the world that would forever change the face of the profession.  All of this, of course, began in an age before internet and facebook and half-baked blogs (such as this) spread information - and sometimes a little misinformation - around the world like wildfire.

As a student who based way, way to many of his school projects on the articles I found in IZY, it was one of my longstanding dreams to see my name in it underneath the title of a paper I'd publish that would be brilliant and original and much-discussed.  That ship, alas, has sailed.

Perhaps you'd noticed my heavy use of the past tense in this post...

It was recently announced that International Zoo Yearbook will be published no more.  I guess I can understand.  Why spend a lot of time and money to produce one laborious volume a year when new developments and updates continue to occur at breakneck speed, and it's so easy to share them electronically?  Even ZSL, the publishers of the book, are much more active on social media, where it's so much easier to spread the message to a much wider audience.  Still, I miss the magic of the Yearbook.  Something about the columns of black and white text and photographs and ponderous descriptions and accompanying graphs and charts carried a certain scholarly dignity and academic majesty that I feel is somewhat lacking from the field these days. 

I do respect and admire all of the changes that the field has undergone in recent years, and greater accessibility is very desirable.  Still, I wish it could still retain a little of the old magic, the kind that I associate with a hefty book full of secret knowledge, read while the snow is piling up outside the library windows.