How to find everything there is to know about “Mr./Ms. X”
SLA 2011 Conference presentation By Bridget Gilhool and Jennifer McMahan
I went to this session at the annual SLA conference to find resources on real property records because my library supports the people that actually create all of the public real property records in the country. I gleaned much more from the session than I expected and have summarized the major points below:
There are a variety of free and fee resources for finding the following records:
- birth and death
- marriage and divorce
- social security numbers
- addresses including former ones
- property owned
- professional licenses
- corporate affiliations
- court filings
- web sites and email addresses
- colleges attended
- news media coverage
- voter registration
- campaign contributions
- criminal convictions
- and so much more!
I was impressed with the long list of resources for finding company and charity organization information too, including tax returns of nonprofits. (free resource: Foundation Center) If you want to vet an expert witness, or find an unpublished phone number, or get a list of excluded contactors with which the government has been barred from doing business, go to the presenters’ “Resource Guide” and check out all of the links to these and other resources. The slides are also available on web site of the Government Division of SLA.
Here’s what I will be using to find Real Property Records:
NETR Online http://publicrecords.netronline.com/ Property tax assessors have the most complete information! (Thank an assessor today. Does it show that I'm the librarian at the International Association of Assessing Officers)
Vision Appraisal http://www.visionappraisal.com/databases/ These databases have the New England states by city. (Data is also provided by assessors and is the most complete available!)
Public Records Directory http://publicrecords.onlinesearches.com/
If you know of a great resource for finding public records, please share it with us in the comments below!
Mary Odom
Heart of America Chapter President
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Posted by: Wayne Strickland | 10/07/2011 at 10:10 AM