Here at UM-StL, the phone directory increasingly over the past decade has taken to listing entries alphabetically based on the first letter of a generic adjective (like Academic, Business, Campus, Facilities, Human, Institutional, Instructional, Office, Student, or University), rather than according to the first letter of a word central to the meaning specifically sought (like BookStore, Computers, Housing, Police, Registration, etc.). Almost everything at a University may be associated with each of the above generic adjectives, in one sense or another.
Because such entries are listed in the phone book under a letter which has little in particular to do with what one seeks, the task of locating a number in the book is more difficult than necessary. Specifically, it always requires two lookups if the meaning-related word that you look up has a "re-direct" listed, and it becomes a significant open-ended problem if no "re-direct" is listed at all. That is because the search must include not just meaning-related words, but rather the indeterminate list of generic adjectives with which the target might be associated. If one is in a hurry, for example when trying to contact the police or first aid, this practice of non-descriptive listing may thus be dangerous as well.
In some cases the choice of adjective in the phone book, albeit generic, is traditional (e.g. before "people teams" came into vogue, it was for a decade or so fashionable to refer to "personnel" as "human resources"). In other cases, the choice seems arbitrary, as in the choice of "institutional" rather than "campus" safety for listing phone numbers of the police, the locksmith, and environmental health. Knowing this further widens the list of possible places to look, if at first you don't succeed.
Hence for my own use and that of others, I've listed here some items in common parlance whose phone numbers are located (when found at all) at less-than-obvious places in the phone book. If you find other examples that might be helpful to add, drop me a line at pfraundorf@umsl.edu. Perhaps we can ask the University, if not to list more directly, at least to put "re-directs" from oft-sought key words (if not already there) into future editions of the book.
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Note: the prefix to these numbers is area code (314), and when not in brackets the exchange is [516]xxxx.
* This means that no re-direct is to be found for this entry in the 1998-1999 edition.