Telephone Books at Libraries

Even though the telephone company breakup occured a few years ago we are still feeling the effects. Not too long ago the phone company began charging us for directory assistance calls (current Pacific Bell charges are five free calls per month on a residence phone and 25 cents a call thereafter). Those of us who are library users knew that we could still call or go to many of our local public libraries and get this information for free, using their extensive collections of telephone books from many parts of the country.

These telephone books were supplied free to libraries by the telephone companies and the companies themselves often referred customers to the public library since they did not have such extensive collections in any of their own offices.

In exchange for these free telephone books the libraries provided the staff needed both to process the books and to help the public use them, the shelf space needed to store the directories, and a greater accessibility to the books and the information in them (a directory assistance operator is not supposed to give out addresses whereas a library usually will). A pretty fair exchange, I’d say.

Well, all that is going to stop in many of our public libraries. As of Oct. 1, Pacific Bell is no longer providing these telephone books free of charge. It will be charging for all books from out of state, as well as for California directories that are published by other telephone companies.

What this will mean to many public libraries is that they will not be able to afford to purchase the collections that they have had in the past. What this will mean to telephone customers is that they will no longer have free easy access to this information.

It is obvious that telephone books are quite expensive, but perhaps Pacific Bell should try to balance the cost of providing the directories to libraries versus the cost of the tremendous loss of good public relations. I urge them to reconsider this decision and think about the effects on their customers.

ANN HARBACH

Inglewood

Harbach is head of the adult division at the Inglewood Public Library.