Yearbooks
In the pre-digital era, medical societies did not have websites providing information, such as names and addresses of the members, and this also applied to the Dutch Society for Dermatology and Venereology. That is why a so-called 'yearbook' was published once every 2 years. It contained information about the Society, reports from the Board and Committees, staff of the society, requirements for educating dermatologists, the list of members with addresses and telephone numbers, all details of the academic centers, special activities of members, publications of the academic centers and - hurrah! – also the publications from dermatologists in non-academic hospitals. Also included was a predecessor of Facebook, the 'Portrait Gallery'.
A page from the Portrait Gallery with yours truly (with moustache) at the bottom left. I have asked the colleagues on this page I could reach for permission and one refused (you can probably see who). I can only hope not to receive angry reactions from the (next of kin of) others and not to get a warning from the privacy watchdog
Three times I have been one of the yearbook editors, responsible for collecting the data and producing the book; the others were Edith de Boer, Auguste ('Guus') Glastra and Jannes van Everdingen. Together we produced the yearbooks 1989/1990, 1991/1992 and 1993/1994. There was no chairman and I don't remember who wrote the Introductions in these booklets, but in the first yearbook I distinctly recognized my sense of humour. It read: 'The portrait gallery is also present. It seems that a number of aging members have become stuck in their adolescence. This cannot (unfortunately) be attributed to the recent use of tretinoin in the fight against wrinkles and other signs of the ravages of time. This pseudo rejuvenation was caused by the lack of updated passport photos! Yet, because the old photos from the previous yearbook had to be reproduced, ''aging'' has still struck'. This is so typical of De Groot, it almost must have come from me.
Furthermore, as shown from the text, digitization was already introduced in that period: 'The yearbook editors, as befits them, move with the times and the entire book was therefore delivered in W.P. 5 to the printer. This has the important advantage that the entire address file does not have to be retyped in a subsequent edition'. W.P. is the abbreviation of Word Perfect, a predecessor of the current word processing program Word. That digitization was present was also apparent from the following sentence: 'The universities were requested to supply their lists of publications on diskette…..'. And I also thought I recognized my style of humor in: 'It may be clear that considerable scientific work has been done and much has been published, but it is striking that the section 'Abstracts', which reflects the wanderlust of academic colleagues, is sometimes top-heavy. Some stories were apparently so interesting that they were presented at 2 or even 3 conferences!'
While the earlier yearbooks were still a financial loss for the NVDV, these books have brought in money. To generate revenue, we actively approached pharmaceutical companies for advertising acquisitions and have succeeded very well This was briefly mentioned in the report on the Leo Dermatology Award 2000 in the Dutch Journal of Dermatology and Venereology: 'Anton's activities for the yearbook should also not go unmentioned. Thanks to him, the publication of the yearbook became profitable to the Society'. It was written by Auguste Glastra, who was co-editor of the yearbook with me at the time, from which I conclude that my contribution to raising funds must have been significant.
In the 1993/1994 edition, we announced that we would like to see the Editorial Board of the yearbook rejuvenated. Apparently we succeeded, because it was our (or at least 'my') last yearbook.