Blue pages are a
telephone directory
A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization tha ...
listing of American and Canadian state agencies,
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
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. The blue page listings included both provincial and federal entities. The Canadian government ceased publishing phone numbers for each federal department in 2015, although individual provinces and municipalities continued to give local information.
United States
In the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, the blue pages included state, federal, and local offices, including
service districts such as school districts, port authorities, public utility providers, parks districts, and fire districts. Starting in 1997, the blue pages also provided information about government services, in addition to officials' names, addresses, telephone numbers, and other contact information. They were published either separately from the rest of the phone book, or consolidated into one volume, depending on the phone company and year. However, some phone books misplaced government-run businesses like Amtrak outside of the Blue pages section. 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).
Other
The name "blue pages" has been used for various specialised directories by private-sector entities such as the internal IBM Staff directory.
See also
*
Yellow pages
The yellow pages are Telephone directory, telephone directories of business, businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, ...
References
External links
"USA Blue Pages" - officialusa.com an unofficial blue pages directory for US federal and state agencies
Telephone numbers
Directories
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