- 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.

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:

* Public access information was never intended for background screeners. Background screening companies just make people not get hired.
* Employers shouldn’t be using background screening companies, but rather should be using the DOJ/LiveScan [the FBI].
* There are penal codes stating that the type of research that background screening researchers are doing is illegal. [But she refused to mention what these laws are.]
* Background screening companies and researchers are not trained to know what they are doing.

There is no identifying information in the computer to know if a researcher has identified the correct person. [Note: The terminal does display a full name and the DOB.]

At present according to Judith Smith, Ms Matherly has instructed the Superior Court Clerks to do the following:

* Only attorneys and their investigators now have access to the locked room where the public access computer with access to the public records now resides.
* Clerks are not allowed to provide dockets to anyone except to the defendant or their attorney of record.
* Record searchers may only provide clerks with 10 names a day.
Clerks may onlyprovide very limited information (for free) if there is only one recent case. Only data provided are the case #, violation and disposition date, the charge and disposition for convictions. If a charge was dismissed the clerk will not inform the requester. Also, no information is provided on sentencing or parole violations. However, the researcher can obtain this information for a $15.00 fee.
* If a subject name has more than one case, the clerks will only provide the case numbers. The researchers then must order each file to review for a $15.00 fee per case.

For those interested:

Judith Smith can be reached atJudie@jhsmithconsulting.com.

The presiding judge and Ms. Matherly’s supervisor is Judge Barry LaBarbera.

Ms. Matherly can be reached at:

Ms. Susan Matherly
Executive Director, Superior Court
1050 Monterey Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93408
susan.matherly@slo.courts.ca.gov
805-781-5421

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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