RELEASE DATE: MARCH 15, 2015
KINSEARCHING
by
Marleta Childs
P. O. Box 6825
LUBBOCK, TX 79493-6825
[email protected]
Are you attempting to discover your birth parents? Or are you trying to find runaway children? If “yes” is the answer, you may find useful ideas for your quest in Lori Carangelo’s THE ULTIMATE SEARCH BOOK: U. S. ADOPTION, GENEALOGY & OTHER SEARCH SECRETS, 2015 EDITION. In the unique position as director of the organization, Americans for Open Records (AmFor), Carangelo has gained considerable knowledge about methods and resources for locating people under difficult circumstances.
As she did in the 2011 edition of ULTIMATE SEARCH BOOK, Carangelo shares trade secrets experts utilize to get past obstacles to find individuals by legal means in various types of public records, which may be free or may require a fee. However, this latest edition deviates from the previous one in three ways. First of all, the author focuses on sources in the United States instead of emphasizing resources world-wide. She discusses numerous American record categories that figure in the research procedure, such as adoption decrees, age searches in federal censuses, baptismal certificates, court dockets, divorce decrees, DNA testing, hospital records, military records, occupational and recreational licenses and registrations, prisoner locator websites, public telephone directories, Social Security records, voter registrations, and yearbooks.
The second difference between the two editions is the inclusion of a 25-page Addendum that shows facsimile illustrations of an assortment of documents that may crop up during the research process. Examples include birth certificates (for instance, short- and long-form, hospital-issued, and religious), adoption decrees, International Soundex Reunion Registry forms, and requests to waive oourt fees.
Finally, the third distinction is that the 2015 edition can be utilized as a companion to its 2011 counterpart. (For a review of the 2011 edition, see the “Kinsearching” column for 24 April 2011.) Or, since the author discusses briefly major American resources, the book can be used as a stand-alone volume.
Carangelo’s work is the only publication that gathers into one volume a vast amount of valuable data relating to often difficult topics regarding adoption and missing persons in the United States. A copy of THE ULTIMATE SEARCH BOOK, 2015 EDITION should be in every library genealogical collection.
The 85-page publication has soft covers, a preface, illustrations, a bibliography, and an index to topics. To the book's price of $19.95, buyers should add the cost for postage and handling charges. For U. S. postal mail, the cost is $5.50 for one book and $2.50 for each additional copy; for FedEx ground service, the cost is $7.50 for one copy and $2.50 for each additional book. The volume (item order 8813) may be purchased by check, money order, MasterCard, or Visa from Genealogical Publishing Company, 3600 Clipper Mill Rd., Suite 260, Baltimore, Maryland 21211-1953. For phone orders, call toll free 1-800-296-6687; fax 1-410-752-8492; website www.genealogical.com.