With more than 134 million items in a wide variety of disciplines and formats, the Library of Congress has grown to become the world’s preeminent reservoir of knowledge and a renowned provider of unparalleled resources to the American people. Its hallmark treasures include the Gutenberg Bible, the papers of several presidents and five Stradivari instruments.

Sharing those spaces are reference books of all kinds: dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias and even phonebooks. In 1937 the Library began collecting residential and organizational phone directories from many parts of the world, including Belgium, Sweden, Albania and Central Asia. The European Division has put together a list of indexes, as many of these directories are uncataloged. A few directories from Bulgaria, Poland and Romania have been digitized using page-turner technology, so your fingers can really do the walking.