Articles Posted in July, 2007

Checking for criminal records is different from “skip tracing,” though some of the records do overlap (e.g. if the person you are tracing happens to be in the criminal justice system). Here’s a terrific Skip Tracing guide by the King County Law Librarians for Washington State residents. It can be adapted for Oregon.

Skip tracing isn’t a fast, cheap, or easy thing to do, just as criminal background checking isn’t. But you can do a lot of it yourself and then hire a professional to do the tricky bits that require specialized or expensive databases or particular expertise.

I’ll save Employment Background Checks for another day.

How can I do a criminal record check?

Librarians get this question so frequently we could practically answer it in our sleep. I’ve addressed it before, but it’s worth repeating.

Locating criminal records is always harder than most people imagine. There is no single database for searching criminal records, unless you know for a fact that the person never committed a crime outside of a single county, in a single state, in the U.S. Even then, records migrate over time and it might be necessary to research print records and online ones.

Jimmy Wales (Mr. Wikipedia) and Ward Cunningham (Mr. Wiki) in Portland at the same time – it almost makes librarians weak at the knees. (Wales was in town, with other luminaries, for the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. Cunningham lives here.)

Librarians are thought to be little bit odd in some towns but we fit right and tight into the Portland Metro Area (PMA?), where we recently learned that at least one of our local icons (and I’m sure more of them too) like to read:”Book ‘em, Danno”, a 7/27/07 Oregonian editorial and a smile-worthy followup to the 7/21/07 New York Times story deserving of its own blog entry, “CEO Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.”

None of us should be surprised to hear that these titans, including Phil Knight, are bibliophiles, but we are! And it is beyond charming to hear that some of them think of reading and book collecting as guilty pleasures. Multnomah and Washington County residents love and value their libraries, and their books, so toss that guilt out the window, or at least recycle it with your old sneakers. Some people out there do need to feel a little guilt, maybe for not supporting reading and libraries.

You don’t have to store free information, except in your brain or in a notebook. You don’t need to rent storage units, buy a bigger condo, or park your car on the street because the garage is full of stuff. And if you have to run away from home, you don’t need to carry much more more than your library card. (Note to those who take me way too seriously: if you run away from home, please do a little more research.)

With your library card, you have access to so much free information your head may explode. And if you live somewhere the libraries don’t offer these services, you can often buy into them for a small annual fee.

Check out this CNET Story, Free Information for the Taking.
Check out Multnomah County Public Library web page.
Check out Washington County Public Library web pages.
Check out the New York Public Library library card web page.

There are lots of reasons legal researchers, and others, need U.S. life expectancy information, and it is always good to go to official sources:

1) Life Tables (NCHS)

2) Mortality Tables (NCHS)

Almost everyone loves a mystery whether it be a book, a TV show, a movie, a thrilling true story of a long-lost whatsit found after a lengthy search. But no one connects that excitement with life in libraries and librarians and researchers. I sometimes wonder why, but then forget about it because I have some legal research mysteries of my own I’m hot on the trail to solve.

A story ran a few days ago (the MSNBC one here) on how the Senate removed evidence of their actions from the Congressional Record. This isn’t anything new and I admit this doesn’t sound like riveting stuff, but it is! Imagine (work with me here) being a writer, a lawyer or a journalist a few years from now and you have to research a legislative history, or any other history, of Congressional actions during the Libby (Scooter, that is) years. Unimaginative researchers will look in the usual sources and, wonder of wonders, believe what they read in tomes like the Congressional Record, the Presidential Papers, and other such “official” sources. Some will even believe what the press secretaries or public officials say at press conferences! Isn’t that a hoot? But the others will ferret and discover the truth.

Research, like love, puppies, life, and rain, is messy, but worth the bother. The joy of discovery, of uncovering buried treasure, of piecing together heretofore disjointed facts, and bearing witness to the birth of an idea can’t be beat. Some of our local newspaper reporters and bloggers know this well (and learned well from reporters of yore, Twain, Murrow, Stone, etc. – any journalism student could probably name you dozens more). They are regular gumshoe journalistic detectives, taking not only to the library but also to the streets, the sources, the buried treasure.