Before the 1940 Census was transcribed and made searchable, the Nebraska Library Commission worked with Nebraska institutions to digitize the telephone white pages from 1940 and make them available online. Our hope was that the addresses of individuals listed in the white pages could be used to help locate individuals in the 1940 census. Please keep in mind that everyone may not have owned a telephone in 1940. Information on how to use a telephone book to locate an individual can be found below.
First you will need to look in the appropriate white pages and find the individual's address. The white pages have been OCR'd so you can use the PDF find option. Keep in mind, however, that the OCR process is done by a computer and is not always perfect. Looking at the white pages, it appears that first initials are used a lot instead of spelling out the first name. Please also keep in mind that everyone may not have owned a telephone in 1940.
After you have located a person’s address, you can use that information to find what enumeration district the person lived in. An enumeration district (ED) is the area that a single enumerator (census taker) could cover in one census period. If you do not already know what county the address is located in, you will need to determine that. Once you have the county information, you can search for the ED maps which are located on the National Archives’ website.
Enumeration District Maps that can be used to identify an enumeration districtThanks
We would like to thank the following institutions for helping us with this project.
Brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission, with funding from the State of Nebraska and the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
