The Alaska Power & Telephone directory will see its last printing this year. Starting in 2021, AP&T will cease printing phone books for its users, leaving some residents feeling disconnected.

“It’s been debated for many years,” customer operations representative based in Port Townsend, Washington, Mary Jo Quandt, said this week. “Phone books are no longer cost effective…We’re in the electronic age. People use their cellphones and the Internet.”

But in Haines, consistently the oldest community in Alaska with a median age of 48.6, some residents still rely on their land lines.

A press release from the telephone company instructs customers looking for their neighbors’ phone numbers to: “keep your old phone book, do a search on the web,” or “Google It.”

“Oh dear,” said Joan Snyder, 91, in response to the news. “What will I do? I’ll just have to keep saving my old ones.”

Mary Price, 88, said she relies on her phonebook once a week to look up numbers or post office boxes. “I’m not very good at this modern technology,” she said. “I have very few numbers memorized. I’m getting older, I’m starting to forget them.”

Residents said that the phone books have gotten slimmer in recent years as more residents disconnect landlines in favor of cellphones.

“I see from the size of the phonebook that it’s moving in that direction fast,” Georgia Haisler, 86, said. “I would still like a phone book, but I doubt that I’m in a majority here.”

Anne Quinlan, who is using one of the last thick phonebooks from 2016, said she tried to call the borough from her winter home in Sun City, Arizona, last week, but found the number had changed. “I had to call the mayor,” Quinlan said.

The Haines Sheldon Museum has archived phone directories from the valley dating back to the 1960s. Museum director Helen Alten called them “a critical document from a historic standpoint.”

“They are a way of tracking population,” she said. “We have had research requests for people trying to figure out if someone was in the community at the same time as somebody else, and they’ve gone back to the phone books. It’s been less useful with the advent of the cellphone because a huge portion of our population isn’t in the phone book anymore, so it’s less diagnostic.”

KHNS reporter Henry Leasia said he uses the book “quite a bit” for reaching sources. “It’s nice to not always rely on yourself for remembering numbers, and also not having to bother other people to give out cell phone numbers,” he said. “If they’re in the phone book, we know they’re willing to have their number be public.”

AP&T is no longer required by law to publish phone books after the Alaska Legislature unanimously approved House Bill 169, effective Jan. 1, 2016.  “Since that time, many telecom companies have opted out of producing phone books,” Quandt said. She added that, if a private company wanted to continue printing phone books, AP&T would be supportive—“But at this time it is too early to tell if that will happen.”

The final phone book will be printed in March 2020. “Hopefully, everyone will read the information in the book regarding this change and hold on to their 2020 book,” Quandt said.