Data For Exploration Data packages Directory Holdings Data Package

Directory Holdings Data Package

The Directory Holdings Data Package consists of metadata describing the Library of Congress inventoried holdings of United States Telephone Directories, City Directories, and Criss-cross directories. It is based on the inventory tables listed on the Library's United States: City and Telephone Directories and Directories By Address: Inventories of Library Collections Library Guides . The data is presented two ways: by Directory Type and by state/region.

A black and white photograph of a telephone and directory in 1940 — Telephone and directory. Dubuque, Iowa

About this dataset

This dataset was created as part of an LC Labs experiment in collaboration with AVP to explore ways of bringing together curated lists of items selected by subject specialists or other knowledgeable staff into a single dataset.

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. City directories often provide additional information about individuals such as place of employment and name of spouse. The entries are arranged alphabetically by last name and also by address and telephone number. City directories are compiled through door-to-door surveys and are published at irregular intervals. The Library of Congress has an unmatched collection of United States city directories. They are available in a variety of formats: paper, microfiche, microfilm, and electronic.

City Directories of the United States 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 and Electronic Resources Center. Paper copies of the guide to city directories can be found in the Microform and Electronic Resources Center and at the Local History and Genealogy Reference Desk in the Main 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.

View source collection

Metadata	Metadata formats
250,318 records	.csv, .json

Data package documentation

Included in this data package is comprehensive documentation of source data or collection provenance, the contents of the data package, and how the data package was created. Here are some particular sections of interest as well as a link to the full documentation:

View the documentation

Dataset at a glance

How to access and use this data package

There are two main options for accessing and using this data package: (1) Directly downloading files from this page and (2) using Python for more advanced usage.

Direct downloads

The following list outlines the contents of this data package. Many of the individual files inside the data package are linked directly on this page which you can download and immediately use. Zipped files are available for bulk download of the entire or parts of the data package.

Download the full data package by type	directories-by-type.zip (9.6 MB) - Bulk download the entire data package by type (city directories, criss-cross directories, telephone directories), including metadata and documentation, as a zip file.
Download the full data package by region	directories-by-region.zip (10.8 MB) - Bulk download the entire data package by region (U.S. States and Territories), including metadata and documentation, as a zip file.
Sample the data	sample-data.zip (36.6 KB) - 100 randomly selected items from the 250,318 item set have been provided as sample data. Included with this are a metadata.csv, metadata.json, and metadata.jsonl, zipped. sample-data/metadata.json (95.6 KB) - A JSON file containing the metadata for the 100 sample items sample-data/metadata.csv (72.6 KB) - A CSV transformation of the sample JSON metadata
Download the documentation	README.html - An overview of the source data or collection provenance, the contents of the data package, and how the data package was created. README.md (28.9 KB) - README as a Markdown text file README.pdf (32.0 KB) - README as a PDF file README.html#dataset-field-descriptions - Metadata field descriptions
Download city directories metadata	by-directory-type/City Directories/metadata.json (45.2 MB) - A JSON file containing the metadata (56,612 records) by-directory-type/City Directories/metadata.jsonl (45.2 MB) - A JSON lines version of the JSON data, with one record per line, useful for processing large files by-directory-type/City Directories/metadata.csv (33.8 MB) - A CSV transformation of the original JSON metadata
Download criss-cross directories metadata	by-directory-type/Criss-cross Directories/metadata.json (MB 6.7 MB) - A JSON file containing the metadata (8,385 records) by-directory-type/Criss-cross Directories/metadata.jsonl (6.7 MB) - A JSON lines version of the JSON data, with one record per line, useful for processing large files by-directory-type/Criss-cross Directories/metadata.csv (5.0 MB) - A CSV transformation of the original JSON metadata
Download telephone directories metadata	by-directory-type/Telephone Directories/metadata.json (189.7 MB) - A JSON file containing the metadata (185,321 records) by-directory-type/Telephone Directories/metadata.jsonl (189.5 MB) - A JSON lines version of the JSON data, with one record per line, useful for processing large files by-directory-type/Telephone Directories/metadata.csv (147.1 MB) - A CSV transformation of the original JSON metadata
Download the directory holdings metadata by individual state or region	by-region/index.html - Browse the directory holdings metadata files (.csv, .json) by state or region

Using Python

While direct downloads are more convenient for most activities, users with familiarity with writing Python can perform more advanced and complex tasks programmatically.

For your convenience we developed a number of Jupyter Notebooks to help get you started.

View the Python notebook for this data package

Resources & explorations

Online resources and explorations built using this data.

United States City Directories Map, 1861-1960 (interactive map)
Criss Cross Directories Map, 1930-2005 (interactive map)

Dataset details

Source collection	United States City and Telephone Directories guide The image files in this dataset are derived from the inventory tables listed on the Library's Directories by Address: Inventories of Library Collections and United States City and Telephone Directories guides.
Rights statement	These data are free to reuse.
Date created	2023-07-26
Date updated	2024-03-29
Creators & contributors	Creator: AVP Contributors: LC Labs Business Reference Section History & Genealogy Section
Cite this dataset	Chicago citation style: Library Of Congress. Directory Holdings Data Package. [Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2023] Software, E-Resource. https://data.labs.loc.gov/directories/. APA citation style: Library Of Congress. (2023) Directory Holdings Data Package. [Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress] [Software, E-Resource] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://data.labs.loc.gov/directories/. MLA citation style: Library Of Congress. Directory Holdings Data Package. [Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2023] Software, E-Resource. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, </data.labs.loc.gov/directories/>.
Curatorial questions	For curatorial questions about the content of the collection or technical questions about the dataset formats and composition, please contact the History and Genealogy Section via the Library's Ask a Librarian service at https://ask.loc.gov/genealogy-local-history/ .
Access questions	For questions and technical issues about download and access, please submit a ticket on Github or email the LC Labs Team at [email protected] .