CD-ROM phone books are made by a variety of companies. They usually contain all of the phone numbers for a particular area, such as the entire United States or Canada. There are even CD-ROM phone books available for some other foreign countries. You can purchase CD-ROM phone books through software catalogs and magazines, but many libraries carry them as well.

For example, the Library of Congress has Phone Disc USA in their Local History and Genealogy Reading Room. You can use this to search for phone numbers throughout the United States just by typing in the name of the individual for whom you are searching. In addition to searching by name, many CD-ROM phone books allow you to search through the database using addresses, cities, states, zip codes, telephone numbers, and business types.

When you search for your living relative in a CD-ROM phone book, it's worthwhile to search for that individual's friends, neighbors, and employers, too. If you know who these people are, they may be able to lead you to the relative that you are looking for.

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