Few counties in California have vital records indexes online. To search for a birth, death or marriage you have to go to the county Recorder where the document was filed. Counties have each of these indexes in various formats: books, microfilm, microfiche and computer. This tip applies to the computer searches.

I previously mentioned online government public record indexes at PIbuzz that you can search using various wildcard symbols with partial company or personal names.

Some databases won’t return results if you enter a partial first or last name or if you only enter one or the other. But sometimes you may want to do a less restricted search of a marriage index. For example, you may know the first name of the bride and want to find all men who married a woman with that first name. Or you only have the last name for the groom and you want to find all records, without having to enter a first name. I’ve faced this situation when I’m doing genealogical searches for pension beneficiaries, heirs in probate cases or just trying to find someone or update their name. Sometimes my information is so dated that there’s no link between that and and the content in proprietary databases — such as those that have credit headers, historical phone listings and court records.

Try this next time you’re searching the birth, death or marriage index at the county Recorder’s onsite computer. Enter the first or last name in the designated field and put two percentage symbols (%%) in the other field. I tried this recently at the San Mateo County Recorder and it worked perfectly.

Do you have a tip for wildcard searching public records?

• Non-Current – Telephone and City Directories in the Library of Congress
  

• Financial Data – Non Publicly Traded Companies

• Telephone Number Caller Identification

• How to find types of information with a search engine

• Kerry Ireland Graveyard Records

• Search graveyards in Ireland

• Dublin family history resources

• Ireland Family History records online

• Genealogy resources links

• Mine the Web Like a Journalist

• California Nursing Home search – citations and violations

The rest of my favorite links are here.

• NewsLibrary.com

• VIN Decoder

• Listen to the outgoing cell phone message

• UK Family history records

• Newspapers, Magazines, Broadcast Media Around the World

• Real-time News from 25,000 sources

• Create Maps with Multiple Locations

• Names of Americans Killed in Acts of Terrorism

• Searching your Irish roots online

• Find federal, state and locate elected officials

• Check Status of Voter Registration by county – California

• Verify Voter Registration Status – 50 State Directory

The rest of my favorite links are here.

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.

From Public Record Update – A Monthly Newsletter by Mike Sankey, BRB Publications:

The Illinois Department of Professional Regulation recently issued a “cease and desist” letter to a PRRN (Public Record Retriever Network – www.prrn.us) member based in Illinois for performing public record research and not having a private investigator’s license. The Department interpreted that the act of researching public records is considered to be performing an “investigation.” This is regardless if the PRRN Member was merely researching and reporting to a attorney, private investigator, or consumer reporting agency (CRA) what is found in a court’s public record docket.

The licensing of Private Investigators is governed by 225 ILCS §447. Article 5 defines, in part, that a private investigator is someone who “…engages in the business of, accepts employment to furnish, or agrees to make or makes investigations for a fee or other consideration…” Articles 10 and 15 list exemptions. See the statute at www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs2.asp?ChapterID=24

At present the only state in the U.S. that requires a pure public record researcher to have a PI license is Nevada. Of course, if a researcher or document retriever is openly advertising that he/she provides background investigations or provides criminal background checks, then in some states (including IL) a PI license may very well be required. Also it should be noted that some states, such as Nebraska, require title abstractors to be licensed as an abstractor.

Interestingly, similar situations occurred several years ago in Arizona and Texas. The states had similar laws to IL. A PRRN members was actually thrown in jail in Texas. But the issues were resolved and the end result is that public record researchers are not required to be licensed as PIs when simply hired by private investigators or Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRA) to report facts in the public records.

If this issue is of interest, there is an older, but still applicable article titled “The Trouble With PI Licensing Statutes” written by Carl Ernst, found on the BRB Publications site at www.brbpublications.com/articles.aspx.

• 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.