• Screenshot History for websites

• SSDI Death Records

• California agencies issuing business permits and licenses

• Online Searchable Death Indexes, Records and Obituaries

• LegiScan | Keyword search legislation in 50 states

• Federal Motor Carrier Safety Licensing – Out of Service Carrier

• Federal Tax ID Number Search

• Dept. of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration, Abandoned Plan Search

• Disaster Affected Employer Search

• Global Terrorism Database

• Manhattan NYC 1940 Telephone Directory

• Historical Searchable Online City Directories

• The rest of my favorite links are here.

Government agencies, financial lenders, family history researchers and private investigators all have an interest in verifying whether a person has died, where and the circumstances. Here are some free resources to get you started with your search:

- Free Genealogy and Family History Sources & Databases is a page of resources I’m still building but it has links to a variety of sites for finding and verifying a death. It includes area specific and aggregated sources for death indexes, newspaper obituaries and death notices, cemeteries and the Death Master File aka Social Security Death Index.

- County Vital Records of deaths may be indexed online. Notices of deaths are sometimes buried(!) in county or town year-end reports.

- Deaths can be searched onsite at the county vital records recorder. If you don’t have the exact spelling you may be able to Wildcard your
county public record searches.

- Directories of Public Records online supplement your search with direct links to burials and deaths indexed by states, counties and private entities. All directories are incomplete. Even though this is a good one, you’ll find additional death indexes on my page, Free Genealogy and Family History Sources & Databases, that aren’t here.

- Search newspapers directly through their sites but also through the aggregated news site Google News and News Archive for mentions of your subject, which may identify where they lived, if not provide an obituary. Recorded deaths that are not at the government website of vital records may be in Newspaper databases of public records.

- Find the burial sites of military veterans and their spouses in the National Gravesite Locator .

- State government divisions of the Secretary of State, the state library and the state archive have digitized records. The documents and indexes that aren’t online are available for free at the agency repository. Often, the catalog of holdings is at the website.

- The New Orleans Public Library, Guide To Genealogical Materials details the various entities that have collected death and burial records and where they can be researched, which will guide you to types of sources you can find in Louisiana and other states.

- Search in various search engines using variations of the subject’s name: [First name Middle name Last name], [First name Middle initial Last name], [Last name First name Middle name]. Search names of relatives. Search birth names and married names. Add a city where they last lived or where they grew up or other identifiers, such as a business name.

• Disaster Affected Employer Search

• Online Dictionary and Thesaurus – The easiest to use

• Public record researchers and document retrieval specialists

• Social Security Death Index – The best!

• Indiana State Social Security Death Index

• Nevada State Social Security Death Index

• Idaho State Social Security Death Index

• State Statutes Addressing Access To Military Discharge Records (DD 214)

• West Virginia Birth and Marriage Index

• West Virginia Death Records Search

• Arizona Birth Certificates Search – 1955-1936

• Ohio Online Death Certificate Index – 1913 – 1944

• Minnesota Death Certificate Index – 1908-2001

• Forensic Database – National Clearinghouse for Science, Technology and the Law at Stetson University College of Law

• Online Daily Newspapers With Obituaries

• Obituary Search Engines and Indexes of Old Newspaper Obituaries

• Time For Memory: Obituaries

• Free Directory of Newspaper Obituaries and Obituary Resources by State

• Obituary Depot – WorldWide Obituary Locator and Newspaper Directory

• Obituary Daily Times (GEN-OBIT) Search

• Search Obituaries – GenealogyBank

• Obituaries | Death Notices | Newspaper Obituaries |

• Bing Advanced Operator Reference

• Open Site Explorer – Find links

• List of search engines – Wikipedia

• International Genealogy databases and research tools

• Heir Finders Investigator Handbook and Forms

• New York Attorney General Real Estate Finance Database

• State, Court, & County Law Libraries

• North Dakota Public Death Index

• Utah State Burials Database

• Utah Death Certificate Index – 1904-1958

• The rest of my favorite links are here.

From BRB Publications newsletter:

Per PRRN Member Judith Smith, the Executive Director of the San Luis Obispo Superior Court – Ms. Susan Matherly – has simply had enough. Ms. Matherly has had it with all the public record search firms hired by employers to check criminal records of local residents that apply for jobs. On March 14th she announced at a local Bar Association luncheon that she was shutting down the public access terminal to background screening firms. And on Monday March 19th she did it. TheIT staff removed the public access computer and put it in a locked room to be accessible only by attorneys and their investigators.

To better understand Ms. Matherly’s logic, consider the following summarized statements she also made at the March 14th luncheon, as reported by Ms. Smith:

But wait, there’s more!

Yet another social media feature has recently been added to Facebook. Is it just a tool to categorize people and pages you want to follow into discrete news streams, or is there an investigative value? You can see examples of how journalists are using the Facebook feature “interest lists.” If you’ve used Tweetdeck to create subject lists that organize those tweeters you’re following, you get the idea. Although, unlike Twitter, you can’t collect posts for your news feed based on keywords. The Facebook interest lists function is more similar to Google+ Circles in the number of characters permitted but Google+ Circles does a better job finding posts based on keyword.

Search a Facebook list by title — or create your own list — but not by other criteria. There are few lists at this point and the search mechanism to find them is limited and quirky, and even more so than Facebook’s notoriously bad search engine for profiles. Initially, a list you create can be populated with posts by people who are your “friends” and by pages. It appears as a list on your Facebook page that you view separately from your news stream.

Select a list and you’ll be taken to a page of aggregated status updates from the profiles and pages added by the list creator — presumably on the theme of the list title. I’ve started one of privacy and open government organizations.

You can see the list creator, go to their Facebook profile and, if public, see their other lists and one’s they’ve subscribed to. Select “Subscriptions” in the panel just below their Timeline cover photo.

View lists you’ve subscribed to as a stream, separate from the one of your friends. You can see the other subscribers to an interest list, just as they can see you.

You can only search for and add lists while using Facebook in your personal profile. Initially, you can populate lists you create from your friends and pages you’ve liked. As you stumble upon other pages or people you want to add to one of your interest lists, select “Add to Interest Lists” on the drop down arrow in the message box below the Timeline cover photo. Your list can be private or public.

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• Create charts from data

• Browsys Search Engines

• Aviation Safety Network

• TweetsBetween – See recent tweets between twitter users!

• Montana State Death Index Registry – through 2002

• ChangeDetection – Know when any web page changes

• InfoMinder – Web page tracker

The rest of my favorite links are here.