Blue pages

"Blue Pages" redirects here. For other uses, see Blue Pages (disambiguation).

Blue pages are a telephone directory listing of American and Canadian state agencies, government agencies, federal government and other official entities, along with specific offices, departments, or bureaus located therein.

Canada

Canadian yellow-page listings indicated "Government Of Canada-See Government Listings In The Blue Pages"; in markets where the local telephone directory was a single volume, the blue pages and community information normally appeared after the alphabetical white-page listings but before the yellow pages advertising.^{[citation needed]} The blue page listings included both provincial and federal entities.^[1] The Canadian government ceased publishing phone numbers for each federal department in 2015, although individual provinces and municipalities continued to give local information.^[2]

United States

In the United States, the blue pages included state, federal, and local offices,^[3] including service districts such as school districts, port authorities, public utility providers, parks districts, and fire districts.^{[citation needed]} Starting in 1997, the blue pages also provided information about government services, in addition to officials' names, addresses, telephone numbers, and other contact information.^[4] They were published either separately from the rest of the phone book, or consolidated into one volume, depending on the phone company and year.^[5] However, some phone books misplaced government-run businesses like Amtrak outside of the Blue pages section.^[6] The color blue is likely derived from so-called government blue books, official publications printed by a government (such as that of a state) describing its organization, and providing a list of contact information. (The blue pages published in a printed telephone directory is usually quite abridged, compared to official blue books).^{[citation needed]}

Other

The name "blue pages" has been used for various specialised directories by private-sector entities such as the internal IBM Staff directory.^[7]

See also

• Yellow pages