It's like the yearbook that high schools publish at the end of the year, but colleges published and distributed facebooks near the beginning of the year, so students could get to know their fellow students and promote a sense of... collegiality.
I remember seeing a printed one in 1995. It was an official college of arts and sciences publication, so did not include any hotness ratings or non-academic vital data. Basically names, photos, undergraduate year of study, and majors.
They moved to departmental websites during and after that time, which is how Zuckerberg was able to scrape names and photos for his own skeezy little project.
