24-547: World Christian Encyclopedia is a reference work , with its third edition published by Edinburgh University Press in November 2019. The WCE is known for providing membership statistics for major world religions and Christian denominations including historical data and projections of future populations. The data incorporated into the World Christian Encyclopedia have been made available online at
48-593: A copyright on telephone listings, because copyright protects creativity and not the mere labor of collecting existing information. In late July 1995 Kapitol launched the Infobel.be website. Infobel was then the first telephone directory website launched on the then-nascent Internet. In 1996, in the US the first telephone directories went online. Yellowpages.com and Whitepages.com both saw their start in April. In 1999,
72-470: A telephone book , telephone address book , phonebook , or the white and yellow pages , is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that publishes the directory. Its purpose is to allow the telephone number of a subscriber identified by name and address to be found. The advent of the Internet, search engines , and smartphones in
96-633: A Danish researcher, has argued that the database contains numerical inaccuracies in its statistics on the Baháʼí Faith . She noted that figures given in WCE for some Western countries are highly exaggerated. For instance, the World Christian Encyclopedia reports an estimated 1,600 Baháʼís in Denmark in 1995 and 682,000 Baháʼís in the US in 1995. According to her, the Baháʼís themselves do not acknowledge such numbers;
120-469: Is a computer program or data that is stored electronically, which is usually found on a computer, including information that is available on the Internet. Libraries offer numerous types of electronic resources including electronic texts such as electronic books and electronic journals , bibliographic databases , institutional repositories , websites , and software applications . Telephone directory A telephone directory , commonly called
144-1063: Is informative; the authors avoid opinions and the use of the first person, and emphasize facts. Indices are a common navigation feature in many types of reference works. Many reference works are put together by a team of contributors whose work is coordinated by one or more editors, rather than by an individual author. Updated editions are usually published as needed, in some cases annually ( Whitaker's Almanack , Who's Who ). Reference works include textbooks , almanacs , atlases , bibliographies , biographical sources , catalogs such as library catalogs and art catalogs, concordances , dictionaries , directories such as business directories and telephone directories , discographies , encyclopedias , filmographies , gazetteers , glossaries , handbooks , indices such as bibliographic indices and citation indices , manuals , research guides , thesauruses , and yearbooks . Many reference works are available in electronic form and can be obtained as reference software , CD-ROMs , DVDs , or online through
168-539: Is often printed on blue pages or green pages. Telephone directories can be published in hard copy or in electronic form. In the latter case, the directory can be on physical media such as CD-ROM, or using an online service through proprietary terminals or over the Internet. In many countries, directories are both published in book form and also available over the Internet. Printed directories were usually supplied free of charge. Selectphone (ProCD) Inc.) and PhoneDisc (Digital Directory Assistance Inc) were among
192-530: The Internet . Misplaced Pages , an online encyclopedia , is both the largest and the most-read reference work in history. In contrast to books that are loaned , a reference book or reference-only book in a library may only be used in the library and may not be borrowed from the library. Many such books are reference works (in the first sense), which are usually used briefly or photocopied from and, therefore, do not need to be borrowed. Keeping reference books in
216-524: The 21st century greatly reduced the need for a paper phone book. Some communities, such as Seattle and San Francisco , sought to ban their unsolicited distribution as wasteful, unwanted and harmful to the environment. The slogan "Let Your Fingers Do the Walking" refers to use of phone books. Subscriber names are generally listed in alphabetical order, together with their postal or street address and telephone number . In principle every subscriber in
240-481: The 21st century, printed telephone directories are increasingly criticized as waste. In 2012, after some North American cities passed laws banning the distribution of telephone books, an industry group sued and obtained a court ruling permitting the distribution to continue. In 2010, manufacture and distribution of telephone directories produced over 1,400,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases and consumed over 600,000 tons of paper annually. A reverse telephone directory
264-453: The US, under current rules and practices, mobile phone and voice over IP listings are not included in telephone directories. Efforts to create cellular directories have met stiff opposition from several fronts, including those who seek to avoid telemarketers . A telephone directory and its content may be known by the colour of the paper it is printed on. Other colors may have other meanings; for example, information on government agencies
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#1732766076627288-460: The WCD's data was "highly correlated with other sources that offer cross-national religious composition estimates" but the database "consistently gives a higher estimate for percent Christian in comparison to other cross-national data sets". Concern has also been raised about possible bias because the World Christian Encyclopedia was originally developed as a Christian missionary tool. Margit Warburg ,
312-775: The World Christian Database (WCD). The first edition, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World A.D. 1900–2000 ( WCE ), by David B. Barrett , was published in 1982 by Oxford University Press . Barrett was a trained aeronautical engineer who became a missionary with the Church Missionary Society (Anglican). He arrived in Nyanza Province in Western Kenya in 1957. Over
336-675: The course of 14 years he traveled to 212 of 223 countries and corresponded with Christians all over the world in search of the most up-to-date statistics on Christianity and world religions. His research resulted in the first edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia in 1982. Barrett moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1985 to work with the Southern Baptists on missionary strategy. He continued his research as an independent researcher, joined by Todd M. Johnson in 1988. With George Kurian, Barrett and Johnson produced
360-511: The creation of a new typeface , known as Bell Gothic , the purpose of which was to be readable at very small font sizes when printed on newsprint where small imperfections were common. In 1981, France became the first country to have an electronic directory on a system called Minitel . The directory is called "11" after its telephone access number. In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in Feist v. Rural ) that telephone companies do not have
384-451: The earliest such products. These were not a matter of a single click: PhoneDisc, depending on the mix of Residential, Business or both, involved up to eight CD-ROMs. SelectPhone is fewer CD-ROMs: five. Both provide a reverse lookup feature (by phone number or by address), albeit involving up to five CD-ROMs. The combination of phone number lookups, along with Internet access, was offered by some service providers; VoIP (Voice over IP)
408-667: The first online telephone directories and people-finding sites such as LookupUK.com went online in the UK. In 2003, more advanced UK searching including Electoral Roll became available on LocateFirst.com. With online directories, and with many people giving up landlines for cell phones whose numbers are not listed in telephone directories, printed directories are no longer as necessary as they once were. Regulators no longer required that residential listings be printed, starting with New York in 2010. Yellow pages continued to be printed because some advertisers still reached consumers that way. In
432-813: The geographical coverage area is listed, but subscribers may request the exclusion of their number from the directory, often for a fee; their number is then said to be " unlisted " ( US and Canada ), "ex-directory" ( British English ), or "private" (Australia and New Zealand). A telephone directory may also provide instructions: how to use the telephone service , how to dial a particular number, be it local or international, what numbers to access important and emergency services , utilities, hospitals, doctors, and organizations who can provide support in times of crisis. It may also have civil defense , emergency management , or first aid information. There may be transit maps, postal code/zip code guides, international dialing codes or stadium seating charts, as well as advertising. In
456-436: The library assures that they will always be available for use on demand. Some reference-only books are too valuable to permit borrowers to take them out. Reference-only items may be shelved in a reference collection located separately from circulating items. Some libraries consist entirely, or to a large extent, of books which may not be borrowed. These are the main types and categories of reference work: An electronic resource
480-553: The number of registered Baháʼís in Denmark, in 1995, was about 240 and in the number in the USA was about 130,000. Reference work A reference work is a work, such as a paper , book or periodical (or their electronic equivalents ), to which one can refer for information . The information is intended to be found quickly when needed. Such works are usually referred to for particular pieces of information, rather than read beginning to end. The writing style used in these works
504-516: The second edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia, in 2 volumes, in 2001 (Oxford University Press). The third edition, written and edited by Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo (Barrett died in 2011), was released in November 2019. Johnson and Zurlo are co-directors of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA, USA). One study found that
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#1732766076627528-508: Was an additional feature. Telephone directories are a type of city directory . Books listing the inhabitants of an entire city were widely published starting in the 18th century, before the invention of the telephone. The first telephone directory, consisting of a single piece of cardboard, was issued on 21 February 1878; it listed 50 individuals, businesses, and other offices in New Haven, Connecticut , that had telephones. The directory
552-486: Was not alphabetized and no numbers were included with the people listed in it. In 1879, Dr. Moses Greeley Parker suggested the format of the telephone directory be changed so that subscribers appeared in alphabetical order and each telephone be identified with a number. Parker came to this idea out of fear that Lowell, Massachusetts 's four operators would contract measles and be unable to connect telephone subscribers to one another. The first British telephone directory
576-612: Was published on 15 January 1880 by The Telephone Company. It contained 248 names and addresses of individuals and businesses in London; telephone numbers were not used at the time as subscribers were asked for by name at the exchange. The directory is preserved as part of the British phone book collection by BT Archives . The Reuben H. Donnelly company asserts that it published the first classified directory, or yellow pages, for Chicago, Illinois, in 1886. In 1938, AT&T commissioned
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