With its recently published 17th edition, the Beacon Hill Neighborhood Guide is now available digitally for the first time.
Compiled each year by the Beacon Hill Civic Association staff in response to the most common inquiries its office receives, the guide offers contact information for elected officials, local police and fire departments, and city and state agencies, as well as information on trash and recycling, street repairs and other general issues. It also provides a map of the Beacon Hill and a calendar of the neighborhood’s major annual events.
The digital guide now allows users to directly access the Civic Association’s Web site and communicate online with any business, organization, elected official or sponsor with a valid, working link. The new format is also available for download as a PDF file.
“Moving into the 21st century, we decided to produce a simple online version of the guide in a format that integrates with our Web site,” Civic Association board member Joan Berndt said. “In the future, if this is well received, there will likely many opportunities to enhance the functionality of the digital guide. We’ll be interested in learning what our constituents think.”
MaryLee Halpin, the Civic Association’s executive director, said while hard copies of the guide are still mailed to the organization’s current and previous members and distributed to local businesses, the shift to digital has already cut the annual cost of producing the guide by $1,600.
“We have significantly reduced our paper distribution, and with that, our printing cost,” Halpin said. ”One of goals here is to provide better, more accessible information; the other is to be more environmentally and cost conscious.”
Chase Mack the Civic Association’s administrative assistant, said the main objective of the online guide is to make the information more readily available to residents.
“It’s our most popular publication, and this way it’s accessible to more people than ever before,” Mack said.
For more information, visit www.bhcivic.org.