After university officials were slow to release students' personal information to the book's publishing company, the Desert yearbook has been cleared for publication this year.

But some students say they wonder whether the book, which will be published for the first time since 1997, will find an audience on campus.

Jeremy Fuson, an undeclared freshman, said he wonders how the yearbook will be successful at a university with more than 37,000 students.

"I don't think it would sell a lot, it's such a big university," Fuson said. "In high school, you're all there at the same time. But in college, everyone has different schedules."

Lyndsay Brown, a pre-education freshman, said she probably won't buy one until she graduates.

"I think I'll get it my senior year, but probably not every year," Brown said.

But other students are enthusiastic about the yearbook, resurrected this year after lying dormant since 1997, when poor sales caused the book to cease publication.

"It seems like a good idea to me, I'd buy it as a synopsis of college life," said Lauren King, a pre-nursing sophomore.

The yearbook staff is now working out of offices in the Student Union Memorial Center, but the book's existence was in limbo for a few weeks earlier this fall when UA officials balked at releasing student information like names and home addresses to the publishing company.

Taylor Publishing, which is publishing and marketing the book, would only agree to the deal if they could have the names and addresses of students and their parents in order to market the yearbook directly to them, said political science and journalism senior Daniel Scarpinato, editor of the Desert, former Wildcat editor in chief and current Wildcat columnist.

"They thought it would be more successful if they market it to parents and students, rather than just students," Scarpinato said of the yearbook, which he estimates will cost between $50 and $100.

But the release of such information had to be approved by UA attorneys to ensure that it was in accordance the Federal Education Rights Privacy Act.

FERPA allows the dissemination of what is known as "directory information" without student approval, such as e-mail, local address, and phone number.

Yet FERPA restricts the unauthorized release of information such as a student's parent's address except in cases of emergency, subpoena, or where the information is used to provide the university a service it could not provide for itself and under agreement that the information will not be shared with third parties.

"They are selling the yearbook on our behalf, as our agent. It's similar if we had to hire a collection agency to go after someone with a debt," said Steve Adamczyk, a university attorney. "The university is really creating the yearbook, but we are hiring expertise. It is completely within the limits of the FERPA law."

Earlier this month, the university delayed signing the contract with Taylor Publishing to ensure that it met FERPA guidelines, leaving the yearbook's future uncertain.

"There was a week or two where we knew it might not happen, that it might go down the drain although we had been working on it since June or July," Scarpinato said. "I sent an e-mail to (President) Pete Likins because I wanted him to know it was a spirit-based project and that we had about 40 students putting time and energy into it."

Scarpinato said Likins finally gave the project his approval on Oct. 14.

"The book is going to be nearly 400 pages in color. People think of a high school yearbook, but we're trying to move away from that. It'll be more journalistic than a high school yearbook, not just a scrapbook of pictures," Scarpinato said. "We'll have a heritage section looking back at the past UA history and 100-year-old traditions that are still around."

Other projects in the book include profiles of student-athletes and an examination of whether the UA-ASU rivalry actually exists in students' minds, said Aaron Mackey, the book's athletics editor and Daily Wildcat design chief.