Telephone Directories on the Web provides quick and easy access to online telephone directories for most countries of the world. It includes links to Yellow Pages, White Pages, Business Directories, e‐mail addresses, and fax listings. The home page has six main geographic choices: North America; South and Central America; Africa; Europe; Asia and Middle East; and Australasia and Pacific. An additional menu choice provides access to multiple country directories, email address directories, area codes, and world times.
This site was developed in 1995 as a simple internal reference page at Buttle Broadcasting. It has been frequently updated since then and now claims to get about a million views each month. There are no actual data at this site; but it is valuable as a well‐organized and comprehensive gateway to a wide variety of online phone books in various languages from around the world. After selecting a region of the world and then a particular country, the next page displays an annotated list of links for telephone books for that country.
The annotations mention any limitations for each directory listed, such as if it is out of date, difficult to use, or requires browsers with frames. The annotations make this site more useful than other Web sites which serve as gateways to online telephone directories. The home page and subsequent pages are clearly organized and consistent in appearance.
Ease of use and speed of searching vary widely among the online directories. There is a link on the home page to an FAQ section which has useful information about the scope and limitations on the types of directories included. As might be expected, there is a great variety of online telephone directories for the USA, such as reverse directories, which allow you to find someone’s name or address from their telephone number, or directories which allow you to find a name or phone number for a given street address. Additional directories for the USA include email directories and directories of government agencies and toll‐free telephone numbers.
The email directories contain addresses that are automatically collected; and they are not nearly as current, complete, or accurate as telephone directories. A side bar on the home page includes links to several unrelated but useful Web sites, including world climate, TV schedules and place names of the world. World climate data may be searched by the name of the town; and data will be given for all weather reporting stations within the area. These data are for historical weather averages rather than current information. The number of tables varies by weather station, but typically includes tables for average rainfall or average temperature and may sometimes include average maximum or minimum temperature.
The section on TV schedules of the world includes links to multi‐channel listings for channels available through broadcast, cable, and satellite in a particular Zip code. If you live in a small town, it may be necessary to enter the Zip code of the nearest city to obtain relevant listings.
Telephone Directories on the Web claims to be the most comprehensive and up‐to‐date guide to Web phone books in the world. It has won numerous awards and can be readily recommended for bookmarking or linking from a library or personal Web page. Similar Web sites, such as 555.1212.com (http//www.555‐1212.com), Info Space (http//www.infospace.com), and WorldPages (www.worldpages.com) also include links to foreign telephone directories, email addresses, fax numbers, business and government directories, but are less comprehensive in covering foreign countries. Other popular gateways to telephone directories, such as Switchboard (http//www.switchboard.com) and AnyWho (http//www.anywho.com) are limited to the USA.
