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They can be used to press flowers—or as a booster seat, door stop or laptop desk. However, fewer and fewer phone books today are employed as originally intended—to look up telephone numbers. So why are they still regularly dropped at our doorsteps? 

The main reason: the law. In most states, phone companies are still required to provide the directories to landline customers, even if the tomes might soon make their way to landfills. In fact, less than 16 percent of adults recycle their old or unwanted phone books, according to a survey conducted by WhitePages, a popular online phone directory. Now, the company is sponsoring a "Ban the Phone Book" initiative to encourage phone book "opt-in" delivery programs, reports Grist. A few of these plans, which require subscribers to actually request the books, have already sprung up in parts of Georgia, Ohio and Florida. (Many more areas offer the less efficient "opt-out" programs.)

Atlanta and Columbus, Ohio, are two of the latest cities halting the automatic delivery of AT&T's directories. "Consumers use other resources to get residential numbers, such as storing contact numbers in their cell phones, creating their own personal directories or from community bulletins," Chris Bauer, an AT&T spokesman, told UPI . "And many people are now using their cell phones as their sole phone line, and cell phones aren't listed in the residential directory."

The first printed U.S. phone directory was likely New Haven’s 50-number listing in 1878, reports Slate. "The most popular printed work ever" has acted as a "barometer of societal change," notes the online magazine. Southern cities typically printed two books—numbers were segregated by race, like everything else in society; temperance groups banned brewery ads. Perhaps, the directory's downfall signals American society's acceptance of the transition into the digital era. "We stopped riding horses, too," Rick Watson, a professor in management information systems at the University of Georgia told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "It’s just part of technological change that occurs and the move to electronic services, which are more convenient."

In 2007, Bill Gates predicted in an address to Microsoft, "Yellow Page usage among people, say, below 50, will drop to zero—near zero—over the next five years." This would be welcome news for the nearly 5 million trees cut down every year to produce the increasingly popular kindling. And for businesses that host online directories.

Picture by PinkMoose via Flickr

9 Comments

1. 1. neurographics 03:56 PM 8/27/09

   I still use my phone books. They are much more accurate than other services, such as Google 411.

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2. 2. neurographics 03:58 PM 8/27/09

   I I still use my phone books. They are more accurate and more detailed than other services such as Google 411. And they don't have to recognize your voice.

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3. 3. silvrhairdevil 04:32 PM 8/27/09

   I live in a small town with a thin phonebook and it is actually quicker to look up a local number than it is to find it online.
   
   That said - I hate those Superpages books with page after page of useless crap. Like I'm going to run for the phonebook if there's an earthquake.

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4. 4. notslic 11:45 PM 8/27/09

   The problem in my small town is that every provider has their own regional directory, so we get four books per year, unsolicited. In college I made good money going through the dorms betting I could tear them in half every time a new one came out. There's a technique. I will admit that the book is the first place I go if I don't know a number.

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5. 5. bellibone 09:02 AM 8/28/09

   Of course Bill Gates would state that the phone books are dead - wouldn't you if you made your millions off of electronic communication.
   
   Online databases are never edited - bad information stays out there forever.
   
   The small business owner cannot compete in search engine marketing, key word bidding. Do you really think the economy will churn higher when it is harder for the local business owner to compete?
   
   One in three households do not have a computer. You can find all local businesses at a glance in a printed product, you don't have to wade through pop-ups or scroll through the national advertisers to find something in a hurry.

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6. 6. madbassoonist 10:04 AM 8/28/09

   I'm well over 50, and I haven't cracked a phone book in years - in spite of all of the phone book vendors that insist on leaving phone books on my doorstep.

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7. 7. bellibone 10:36 AM 8/28/09

   You left out an important part of the quote from Chris Bauer at AT&T:
   
   "Bauer said AT&T has added workers at its call center for Ohio after so many people in the Cleveland region called last month to request white pages that the center was overwhelmed. He said AT&T has been rolling out the new system across the country city by city."
   
   
   
   

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8. 8. Quinn the Eskimo 01:29 AM 8/29/09

   Directories! They still have those?

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9. 9. ButWhatDoIKnow 12:09 PM 8/29/09

   I use the phone book frequently, primarily for the local yellow pages, either to find a particular busines or a group of businesses from which to solicit bids. I sometimes find people in the white pages that aren't in the online directories; e.g., my two listed home phone numbers are not listed on free411.com.

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