U.S. City Directories on Microfilm in the Microform Reading Room
General Comments
City directories are among the most important sources of information
about urban areas and their inhabitants. They provide personal and
professional information about a city's residents as well as information
about its business, civic, social, religious, charitable, and literary
institutions. The Library of Congress has an unmatched collection
of United States city and telephone directories, both current and
non-current. They are available in a variety of formats–paper, microfiche,
microfilm, and electronic. For more detailed information, consult
Telephone
and City Directories in the Library of Congress: a Finding Guide.
City Directories of the United States,
published by Primary Source Microfilm part of Gale Group, is a
large self-service collection of city directories
on microfilm. More than 1200 cities, towns, and counties are represented;
the years of coverage are primarily 1861 through 1960. The directories
are arranged by city (not by state) in large cabinets in the Microform
Reading Room. Directories for many localities include listings
for other nearby communities. When ranges of years are indicated,
there may be gaps
of as many
as
five years.
Numbered miscellaneous reels are shelved at the end of the alphabetical
collection. A separate collection of U. S. business directories,
published from 1902 to 1935 and arranged alphabetically by specific
locality, is shelved following the miscellaneous reels. The business
directories are not included in the checklist below.
A separate microfiche collection of pre-1861 U.S.
directories
is also available on a self-service basis in the Microform Reading
Room. Dorothea Spear's American Directories Before 1860 (LC
Call Numbers: Z5771.S7 LH&G and Z5771.2.S68 1978 MRR Ref Desk)
is a guide to this collection.
The directories listed below are available in the self-service
microfilm collection. None of these directories is available on
interlibrary loan; nor can the staff of the Library of Congress
search these directories for names of individuals or organizations.A list
of free-lance researchers [PDF: 32 KB
/ 3 p.] in the greater Washington D.C. area who perform
research for a fee is available from the Humanities and Social
Sciences Division.
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