Academic

Demise Of The White Pages: The Ohio Phone Book Disappears

By Dan Filler

 The State of Ohio just gave AT&T permission to stop delivering White Pages books to its subscribers.  That makes business sense, I'm sure.  Those hefty volumes must cost a ton to produce and deliver.  And we do live in a new era of information distribution.  Like most folks, I am more likely to search for numbers and addresses on the Web.   But I like the White Pages for those times when a) my high speed internet isn't working; b) I don't have a computer; and c) it's easier to search around by approximate name.  Perhaps, as with legacy library collections, the cost of these conveniences (and might we even say pleasures) is too high to bear. 

Still, I find these small losses losses, nonetheless.  Perhaps not of the magnitude of our nation's card catalog destruction...but as a person who has actually created a publication out of the content of phone books (albeit, the Yellow Pages), paint me vaguely blue.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on February 17, 2009 (boomark / email).