City Directory Example

Client

A Vancouver engineering/environmental consulting company

Need

InfoAction's client provided a map of a designated area in New Westminster, and asked us to conduct a historical city directory search, at five year intervals, for that address and an area of six city blocks surrounding the address.

Process

InfoAction staff identified the surrounding streets and cross-streets in the client's designated area using current street maps. We photocopied the entries for the relevant addresses on those streets from the CrissCross and city directories in print or on microfilm held in Vancouver Public Library's collection, starting with the most recent CrissCross directory (2001), and working backward at five year intervals, to the oldest directory listings for those addresses (in this case, 1890).

Deliverable

InfoAction labelled each photocopy with the appropriate year and flagged each target street, enabling the client to quickly locate each street.

We provided a summary letter, identifying which streets/blocks we searched, the years we included, and abnormalities related to the client's target area (for example, that the street had changed names in 1950).

A courier delivered the documents to the client within 24 hours of InfoAction receiving the request, and Vancouver Public Library's Accounting department mailed an invoice.

Cost

$187.50 for 2.5 hours of research at $75 per hour