Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

INUVIK (May 08/98) - Finding your way through the Inuvik phone book just got a little easier and little more high-tech.

Greg Sim, a bartender at the Finto and a computer enthusiast in his spare time, is making available electronic copies of the local telephone book to anyone who wants one.

With all Inuvik's listing on a single IBM-format œoppy disk, it allows computer users to search for listings by keyword or partial names or even do reverse searches, by punching in a number or an address and seeing whose telephone it is.

"I made it up for myself several years ago and I thought it was time the public had access to it," said Sim, who gives out the disks to anyone who wants one.

"It's a pretty handy tool."

Sim found it useful for himself because of hours sitting at his computer, which he has rigged out with voice-recognition software and other œashy add-ons, and says the electronic listings proved to be both much faster and handier than reaching for the paper copy of the phone book.

The program also allows users to set up a personalized directory of frequently-called numbers or add numbers that are not in the book or on the disk -- unlisted phone numbers, for example, or those in other communities. The disk contains Inuvik's listings only.

Such electronic phone books are available in major centres or on CD-ROMS costing about $100. The Internet offers several sites that can call up telephone listings but they are so popular that it can be impossible to log onto them at certain times of the day and are slower than having them installed on one's personal computer.