Blue pages
Telephone directory of government numbers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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]
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]
