Green Book info going online

From the NY Times:

Sometime this spring, the city plans to update the Green Book, and transfer its contents to a searchable, and easily updated, Web site. A limited number of copies of the printed version would once again be available for sale, but the city clearly intends for the digital version to be the primary one.

“The city is in the process of producing a truly ‘green’ Green Book, and has worked to update the resource after a series of turnovers, election cycles and other changes,” said Lauren Passalacqua, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bloomberg.

The digital Green Book would be only another example of the migration of vast amounts of data to the Internet — in many ways, it is startling that the online version was not developed sooner, given the mayor’s emphasis on technology. The state government’s directory, called the Red Book, is already sold in digital, as well as printed, form. But for longtime creatures of City Hall, many of whom have chafed at the Bloomberg administration’s failure to update the directory in recent years, the book was a mark of the insider.