An issue that has quietly dogged some Tennessee legislators in recent years is the regular distribution of the Tennessee Blue Book, the compendium of current legislators, State history, list of government officials, and administrative information that members of the General Assembly often hand out to constituents who visit Nashville or to voters they visit door to door. Since the books cost the State over $4.00 apiece to print and bind, their lenient availability has become the subject of discussion as to whether the books are one giant wasteful expenditure, and most importantly-as Tom Humphrey points out today-whether passing out the books to constituents is really a taxpayer-sponsored aid to re-election.

The Tennessee Blue Book is not a new instrument, it has been published for literally decades and it is available to any citizen who asks for one free of charge. If the State runs out of copies to distribute, it should be noted that among the first recipients of a new edition of the Blue Book are Tennessee's public libraries. The information printed in the Blue Book would be helpful to any citizen. The State history is beneficial to new Tennesseans ready to learn more about the State they now call home. A person can find their legislators in the Blue Book, and find the names and contact information of virtually every department head in Nashville in one convenient volume. It only makes sense for a legislator to have such a resource available, and for the State to publish them as an easily available small archive. The archival purposes of the Blue Book are apparent in this very article, because the photograph at left comes from the 1939 Tennessee Blue Book.

Therein lies the rub where the Blue Book is concerned. In our own day and age, everything that can be found in its pages is now available online, and that includes the entire 2009-2010 Tennessee Blue Book, which is the latest edition. As long as there are significant numbers of people in Tennessee who do not have a way to access government information via the internet, the State will need to print copies of the Blue Book to make available. However, in the years ahead digital information will likely become even more widely available than it is now, and the State will likely find that it is cheaper to maintain the Blue Book online and digitize State Blue Book archives than it will be to print the book in large numbers.

The new digital reality has already changed the way many Tennesseans find their government information, so the real question is not whether legislators should be able to pass out copies of the Blue Book, but how much longer they may need to.