Blue book

A blue book or bluebook is an almanac, buyer's guide or other compilation of statistics and information. The term dates back to the 15th century, when large blue velvet-covered books were used for record-keeping by the Parliament of England.[1] The Oxford English Dictionary first records such a usage in 1633.[2] The term has a variety of other meanings.

For other uses, see Blue Book (disambiguation).

See also: White paper and Green paper

Academia and education

• The Yale College Programs of Study, referred to as the Blue Book[3]
• Blue book exam, a type of test involving writing an essay, typically into a pamphlet – traditionally blue colored – called a "blue book"
• Blue and Brown Books, the Blue Book of Lecture Notes for 1933-1934 for Ludwig Wittgenstein lectures

Construction

Chicago Construction Blue Book from 2003

• The Blue Book of Building and Construction,[4] was a yellow pages-like buyers guide of company information targeted towards commercial construction, first published in 1913. The guide contains information on architects, contractors, manufacturers, suppliers, vendors, and other companies relevant to the commercial bidding and build process. The hardbound book was retired in 2016 and subsequently replaced by a bi-annual regional magazine called the Who's Who in Building and Construction. The prior content of the hard bound book is now completely online and called The Blue Book Network. The company which publishes the information is Jefferson Valley, New York-based Contractor's Register.

Computing and technology

• Blue Book (CD standard), the name of one format from the Rainbow Book standards for compact discs, defining the Enhanced CD standard
• Blue Book (CCITT), a set of telecommunications recommendations issued by the International Telecommunication Union Standardisation Sector in 1988
• A common name of the book Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation, and any virtual machine implementation based on Smalltalk
• Blue Book protocol, the file transfer protocol of the Coloured Book protocols
• The Java Virtual Machine specification
• Blue Books, spacecraft data and telemetry recommendations made by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems
• Ingo Wegener's Blue Book, an influential textbook in circuit complexity formally titled The Complexity of Boolean Functions (1987)[5]

Government and finance

Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope, Blue Book 1877

• In the Traineeship scheme of the European Commission, internship candidates who pass a preselection are added to a Blue Book, from which the final successful candidates are chosen
• The publications of the European Central Bank describing the main payment and securities settlement systems in the EU Member States.
• A publication of the United Nations Protocol and Liaison Service containing listings relating to Permanent Missions to the United Nations.[6]
• Blue pages, a government telephone directory, published either as part of books for white pages or yellow pages, or separately in a blue book

United Kingdom

• Colonial Blue Books, yearly collection of details wide range of matters from each colonial governor in the British Empire beginning in 1822[7]
• Blue Book (Office for National Statistics), published annually by the Office for National Statistics; contains the estimates of the domestic and national product, income and expenditure for the United Kingdom
• Any official report in the UK of Parliament or the Privy Council, which in the 19th and early 20th centuries were standardly issued in a dark blue paper cover[8]
• United Kingdom National Accounts – "The Blue Book", of economic activity in the United Kingdom
• "Treachery of the Blue Books", the name given in Wales to the 1847 parliamentary report on the state of education in the country
• A weekly digest of signals intelligence reports by the British intelligence agency GCHQ[9]
• "The Blue Book", genocide scholars' nickname for The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916[10]

• The Blue Book, Political Truth or Historical Fact, a 2009 documentary film about this report

United States

• Blue Book (FCC), a nickname for a report on Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees issued on March 7, 1946 by the Federal Communications Commission of the United States
• Blue Book (United States Marine Corps), a bulletin listing the lineal precedence and seniority of Marine Corps officers
• Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force study on UFOs
• Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, a Revolutionary War drill manual written by Baron von Steuben for the Continental Army, colloquially referred to as the Blue Book
• Various information registers from U.S. state governments:
  • Official Manual State of Missouri ("Missouri Blue Book")
  • Oregon Blue Book
  • Tennessee Blue Book
  • Wisconsin Blue Book
• Blue Book of Denver society, first called the Who's Who in Denver Society by Louise Sneed Hill[11]
• The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, a transcript of the founding meeting of the John Birch Society

Transportation

• Aircraft bluebook, a digest that covers the price and condition of used general aviation aircraft in the U.S; the Aircraft Bluebook Rating Scale (or "Bluebook scale") is used in the aviation industry to rate the condition of used aircraft.
• Automobile Blue Book, a route guide to American intercity transportation published between 1901 and 1929.
• Kelley Blue Book, an automotive appraisal guide from the company of the same name; it is the United States' largest automotive vehicle valuation company.

Other publications

• The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, a style guide that prescribes the most widely used legal citation system in the United States
• One of the Blue and Brown Books, sets of notes taken during lectures conducted by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein between 1933 and 1935 also called Preliminary Studies for the "Philosophical Investigations"
• Blue Book (magazine), published from 1905 to 1975
• Blue Book (racing), a publication of The Jockey Club
• Little Blue Books and Big Blue Books, a series of 20th century paperback books by the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company
• The Wee Blue Book, a Scottish political pro-independence publication
• In medicine, the WHO/IARC Classification of Tumors blue book series, published by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the World Health Organization[12]
• The Yearbook of the Motor Sports Association, contains rules for motor sports run under the MSA.[13]
• IUPAC Blue Book, Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry

See also

• Black book
• Blue booking, a term from role-playing games for events which happen away from the game itself
• Green Book (disambiguation)
• Grey literature
• Persuasive writing
• Red Book (disambiguation)

References

1. Preface, Tennessee Blue Book, 2007-2008 edition, page vii.
2. "blue book". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. "A Message from the Dean of Yale College < Yale University".
4. "The Blue Book Network of Commercial Construction".
5. Wegener, Ingo (1987). The Complexity of Boolean Functions. John Wiley and Sons Ltd, and B. G. Teubner, Stuttgart. ISBN 3-519-02107-2., an influential textbook on circuit complexity, commonly known as the "Blue Book". Also available for download (PDF) at the Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity.
6. United Nations Protocol and Liaison Service (August 2018). "The Blue Book". United Nations Protocol and Liaison Service. United Nations. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
7. "COLONIAL 'BLUE BOOKS'". CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. Archived from the original on 17 March 2017. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
8. Oxford English Dictionary.
9. Matthew M. Aid and Cees Wiebes, Secrets of Signals Intelligence During the Cold War: From Cold War to Globalization, First Edition (2001), Frank Cass Publishers. ISBN 0-7146-5176-1
10. James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916, Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Falloden by Viscount Bryce, Uncensored Edition (2000), Gomidas Institute, Taderon Press. ISBN 0-9535191-5-5
11. Marilyn Griggs Riley (2006). "She Decided "Who's Who in Denver Society": Louise Sneed Hill". High Altitude Attitudes: Six Savvy Colorado Women. Big Earth Publishing. pp. 7–20. ISBN 978-1-55566-375-9.
12. "WHO/IARC Classification of Tumours". whobluebooks.iarc.fr. Retrieved 2017-10-23.
13. "MSA Yearbook". MSA website.

External links

• State Blue Books. American Library Association's Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT)