Address/Telephone Directories
from Central Asia
at the Library of Congress

This is a finding aid for telephone directories from the countries of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It consists of over 60 entries representing the Library of Congress' uncataloged holdings of Soviet and post-Soviet era titles as of January 2007. It is arranged by country, then by city, and then by the year prominently displayed on the cover of the piece. Directories that cover the entire country appear first in the list. The type of directory is indicated by the words "residential", "organizational", or "both" for directories that include both business and private numbers. All of the directories are in Russian, but several Uzbek directories have parallel Uzbek/Russian titles. The geographic names used in this list for all five countries reflect recent changes away from the former Soviet and/or Russian names.

In addition to the uncataloged directories listed below, the Library also holds a handful that are cataloged and may be paged from the closed stacks using their call numbers. To locate these directories, search the online catalog using subject keywords such as "Uzbekistan" and "directories" or the name of a city plus "directories".

There are two possible locations for uncataloged telephone directories from Central Asia: the closed stacks (Central Asian directories are currently held on Deck 5S, Adams Building) and the open stacks of the Main Reading Room reference collection (Alcove 4, Deck 46). For items in the closed stacks a reader must request the books by completing a call slip; the other location is open to the public for browsing. The finding aid designates both locations as MRR/GC.

Besides using printed telephone directories, a reader may find it helpful to use online directories available for free on the Internet. The Kazakhstan Yellow Pages site (http://www.yellow-pages.kz) not only has a database of listings for Kazakhstan, but also provides links to listings for the other four Central Asian countries. A Russian telephone portal, Spravka.net (http://www.spravka.net), also links to online directories in Central Asia by country or by city. Searching of these web sites will generally require the use of Cyrillic characters as well as some knowledge of the Russian language.

This finding aid was created by Angela Cannon. For further information concerning telephone directories from the countries of Central Asia held by the Library of Congress, please contact:

Angela Cannon,
Reference Librarian
European Division
acannon@loc.gov

or

Christopher Murphy,
Area Specialist, (Turcica)
African & Middle Eastern Division
cmur@loc.gov