About Search Results

Our Name Search searches two separate databases:

Database 1: Searches the indexes from 75 of our CDs, which contain 738 of our best reference books. The search results from this database will show you both the CD and the books within that CD in which your name was found.

Database 2: Searches for your Surname in the titles, subtitles, and keywords of our publications that are not contained in a CD. Also included in this search are the major Surnames associated with over 450 family histories published by Gateway Press.

The first database allows you to search on a Surname plus a Given Name, while the second database only searches for Surnames.

Here are some guidelines to help you in your search:

If you search on both Surname and Given Name―Preferred Search
The first set of results will be from our CD database.
Results are organized by CD and the books contained within that CD.

Note: Many of our books appear in more than one CD. The book write-up will tell you in which CD or CDs the book appears. We suggest you view the CD write-ups to help you choose which CD to purchase.

Results for Surname must be an exact match.

Results for Given Name will contain the letters you enter, but are not restricted to an exact match.

Our search engine does not allow for wild cards, so please do not use *, ?, or any wild card in your searches.

If you search on a Surname only
In many instances, searching by Surname only will yield an unmanageably large number of hits. Until we add a tool to refine your search, we do not recommend this method of searching the CD Index if your Surname is a common one.

If you search on a Given Name only
Like the Surname only search, this method will only prove useful for the most unusual of Given Names. Because our Given Name field is not presorted alphabetically, the program will be searching every record for the sequence of letters that you enter. Expect this search to take considerably longer.

Searching Database 2 Surnames
For every search we will automatically search the second database of Surnames looking for an exact match. If there are hits, we will show them as
Search Results for the Surname ____________