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A city directory is a listing of residents, streets, businesses, organizations or institutions, giving their location in a
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Directories
A city directory is a listing of residents, streets, businesses, organizations or institutions, giving their location in a city
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
. It may be arranged alphabetically or geographically or in other ways. Antedating telephone directories
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 ...
, they were in use for centuries. Many older directories have been digitized and are available on the open web and through subscription databases.
Examples include Kelly's Directory
Kelly's Directory (or more formally, the Kelly's, Post Office and Harrod & Co Directory) was a trade directory in England that listed all businesses and tradespeople in a particular city or town, as well as a general directory of postal addresses o ...
, R.L. Polk & Company, the Boston Directory
''The Boston Directory'' of Boston, Massachusetts, was first published in 1789. It contained "a list of the merchants, mechanics, traders, and others, of the town of Boston; in order to enable strangers to find the residence of any person." Also ...
, and the New York City Directory
''The New-York Directory'', published in 1786, was the first extant directory for New York City and the third published in the United States. It listed 846 names. A year earlier, the first two in the country were published in Philadelphia
...
. Henderson's Directories
The Henderson's Directories are historical city directories of households and businesses in Canada, published starting around 1880. The geographical focus was on Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan; but coverage also included some cities in Britis ...
were available for several cities in Canada.
See also
* :de:AdressbuchReferences
* * * *Further reading
* {{citation , title=Direct Me NYC 1786: A History of City Directories in the United States and New York City , author= Philip Sutton , year=2012 , publisher=New York Public Library , url= http://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/06/08/direct-me-1786-history-city-directories-US-NYC , work=NYPL BlogsExternal links
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