Arabic version: دار النشر توقف التحديثات السنوية لدلائل الشوارع الأيقونية
Hardie Grant Publishers, owner of UBD Gregory’s and Refidex, will stop producing annual updates for its street directories while keeping the books available, saying the print maps have reached the end of their lifecycle.
According to ABC News, the publisher said the directories had defied expectations for years but sales have fallen to less than 20 per cent of their peak and the specialist workforce shrank to just two cartographers for the last edition.
The change matters because the directories continue to serve as a reliable backup and a historical record. The publisher said a loyal cohort of users—largely older men—kept buying printed maps for situations when phone batteries died, mobile coverage dropped out, or a digital map got it wrong. Emergency Services Western Australia reportedly contacted the publisher when a rumour circulated that a Perth directory might cease, saying they still rely on printed maps where digital mapping is incomplete. Old directories are also consulted by developers and environmental consultants to check historical land use and what once stood on particular sites.
The directories were once produced by teams of about 25 to 40 cartographers, with production involving hand‑drawn templates that were photographed and reduced to fit the format. Sales peaked at around 250,000 copies annually in the 1970s and 1980s; current sales are now under one‑fifth of that volume and Hardie Grant said it can no longer sustain the same update cycles.
What happens next: Hardie Grant will continue to publish UBD Gregory’s and Refidex but will discontinue annual updates and no longer maintain the old update cycles. The coverage also highlights concerns about reliance on GPS — researchers cited a recent Telstra outage that left delivery drivers and commuters unable to navigate, and said evidence links GPS use to a worse sense of direction and less environmental knowledge.
The publisher and former cartographers noted the charm and historical value of analogue directories even as phone-based navigation renders them largely obsolete, and some users and professionals continue to consult printed maps for backup and archival purposes.
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