Archive for the ‘Research Methods’ Category

I wondered what topics I covered this year in my posts so I thought you might appreciate a summary. Since the government agencies often don’t give a context for their online public records — inclusive dates, search function, excluded data — I investigated how this could mislead the researcher in Public records and newspaper databases – Are they what you think they are?.

Database resellers that provide online fee-based public records to the consumer often mislead the researcher and are not transparent about costs or data sources and limitations. I explored these concerns in Follow the identity trail of data brokers and Due Diligence on consumer data brokers.

You can Wildcard your county public record searches in the online public record databases and the computer index at the county court or county Recorder to enable more flexible searching of your terms. If you’re researching a birth, death or marriage at the county Recorder where the document was filed try the search techniques for finding someone in a public record. I gave some specific court examples in Research Tip: California Court Online Case Indexes.

The Social Security Death Index is falling victim to the identity theft scare, curtailing access to public records, even when the positive uses outweigh the destructive and the linkage between online public records such as the SSDI and fraud is slight. The Social Security Death Index is now restricted and will become more so in the near future.

Every month, I summarize the links I collected in the prior month on public record sources, Internet search techniques, legal news and online search tools and databases. You can read those at PIbuzz or search and subscribe to the links as I post them.

And you can add your comment to the discussion of the posts — look in the “Recent Comments” section in the sidebar at PI buzz.

Words of caution when you’re searching public records online:
Online repositories of official records may not be what you think they are.

Washoe County is one of those rare government agencies that has its Marriage Index online. They’re nice people over there. I had a friendly chat with the records supervisor because I wondered why the date of marriage for a couple was recorded as 2001 when the groom had died in 1984. I’m quick on my feet. There was a really good explanation but it wasn’t on their website so you wouldn’t have known it without talking to her.

The county records generated in the paper-only era, before a computer system was operational (1982), suffered a Y2K-like hiccup when they were entered into the computer. The dates of marriage applications filed prior to December 1983 are incorrect, unless they’ve been manually adjusted, which happens if the discrepancy comes to a staff person’s attention. Yet another reason why it’s still worth talking to people. The electronic record date was 2001 but the actual date of the application was 1948.

When in doubt, verify, nicely
Searching Florida recorded records? If you access these through myfloridacounty (a private site) to search multiple counties at one portal, first select the link “Click here for counties current range of dates.” In yet another friendly chat, I found out that 1. The date range for their records is more limited than that at the government county site; 2. The county doesn’t necessarily send the private site every type of record that is in the official Recorder’s index; and 3. Not all Florida counties participate.

Is blue always blue?
Google Archive News includes newspaper sources aggregated by NewsBank but not all content within those sources is indexed and not all NewsBank newspapers are included in Google News. I don’t know if that is written somewhere by an official source but that’s my experience. Your local library NewsBank database may have content more relevant to your search, and it’s free, searchable, with remote access. Also collect library cards from other regions so you can use their area-specific resources.

Support (with money) organizations that advocate for open records or the government may privatize their maintenance – potentially removing the “public” from public records.

• Mexico Court Records

• California State Genealogical Alliance

• Ohio Birth Index

• California Courts case law – natural language search

• California Birth Index 1905-1995

• SearchTeam – real-time collaborative search engine

• LinkedIn’s Undocumented Search Operator

• Obituaries Database

• Ways to use LinkedIn to find people, track changes at companies

• InfoUSA Employer Database

• California – Current Notaries Public

• DISCOVERING FACEBOOK: SOCIAL NETWORK SUBPOENAS AND THE STORED COMMUNICATIONS ACT

• Chat Acronyms & Text Message Shorthand

The rest of my favorite links are here.

• The central database for UK burials and cremations at Deceased Online
  
  
• Using Social Networking Site Information in the Courtroom
  
  
• Reading and Editing Photo Metadata
  
  
• Evidence Technology Magazine

• Criminology and Criminal Justice Resources

• Newspapers searched by Google News Archive Search
  
  
• Data Recovery Services
  
  
• Deep Web Research resources 2011
  
  
• National Indian Law Library, Tribal Law, Tribal Codes and Tribal Constitutions
  
  
• Mergers and Acquisitions Portal
  
  
• SMS Spoofing Number
  
  

School alumni directories verify place of attendance, but so much more. They can launch your search to find where someone works, for example. And you know that’s a challenge with a common name.

The alumni sites are designed for use by alumni, not snoops, so there are usually a few obstacles. Just think as if you are that person and you’ll get through many of these. Often the sites verify past attendance, year of graduation and field of study. The field of study may provide employment cues. In this case, our student’s area of emphasis was “Internet engineering” — so he’s likely working (or in this economy, may someday be working) in the Internet technology area.

Head over to Facebook to advance your resume building. Facebook participants sometimes have more than one profile — maybe a personal one and a work one. In this case, I found the subject’s personal Facebook profile first. He listed a company in the Facebook people search but not on the public portion of his profile page. His “friends” list was private.

Then I searched by name and workplace and discovered his work Facebook profile. He kindly provided a different photo of himself here.

He listed “friends” and interests on the work site. I reviewed his “friends” list and went to their profile pages. Once there, I searched the subject’s name and found that some were friends on his personal site, too.

Maybe those people are more significant than other Facebook friends.

All of these discoveries — friends, interests, education — build the profile and help you tailor your Google searches.

In tip #1 of Finding, Skip Tracing and Locating Women I mentioned one free people finder site and the wildcard tool that can bypass the last name requirement — most helpful in locating women who are probate beneficiaries, potential witnesses in a legal matter or the birth mother of someone relinquished for adoption long ago.

There are many Internet sites for identifying current last names of women — searching by first name only — for whom the investigator may only have a birth name or former married name. Each site returns different results so you’ll want to use more than one, if at first you don’t find what you’re looking for.

At the site, classmates.com, I performed a similar search to the one I did in tip #1, except that there’s no field to restrict the results by year of birth or full birthdate. In that case, I entered just the first name and a state. The results give last names and birth names and the name of the school with the attendance years. You can use this to narrow the birth year. The tip #1 search site returned 17 matches. I supplied first name, age and state. Classmates returned 67 matches associated with first name and state. Very few of these matched the age of the subject, based on the listed graduation years. It’s a limited source but still supplements other sites.

Do you have a favorite website or database that allows searching by first name?