Hey Miss Thurman,
Great question. No doubt you've been googling ways to quickly increase your site's rankings and one of those is to get external links and one of the easiest ways to get external links is to put your info on a ton of online directories... Unfortunately that information is outdated. Nowadays, the links you receive from online directories are basically worthless. The only thing the directories are good for any more is having your business info out there for other people to find.
So I highly recommend that you check local directories to ensure that your business information is correct, but beyond that, I wouldn't worry about them that much. MOZ has a service called Local Listing which will automatically update your businesses' info across a number of listing sites, that others also pull their info from. It keeps you up to date on your submissions, whether there is a duplicate listing, or incorrect listings that need to be removed (some they remove for you, others must be removed by you).