Free Public Records Meta-Sites
Other Records From Commercial Databases
This article represents a fraction of the resources discussed in "How to Use the Internet for Legal & Investigative Research."
How Public Are Public Records? by Carole Levitt, J.D., M.L.S. |
The term "public record" has always been VERY misleading. Even though a record is "public" and available for public scrutiny in the strictest sense, in reality it may not be readily available. The availability of numerous public records via the Internet has addressed some of the accessibility issues, but just as it's always been in the "offline" world, access to free public records via the web is a hit or miss proposition.
What's available varies greatly from state to state, with many states differing greatly on what is and is not considered "public". For example, until recently some states, such as Tennessee, considered driving records to be "public" while others, such as California, did not. The US Supreme Court recently ruled (docket number 98-1464, decided January 12, 2000) that driving records are not "public" records, and therefore will only be available on a VERY limited basis in every state.
Some states, such as Florida (http://www.dos.state.fl.us/), not only have a plethora of free public record information on the web (such as UCCs, trademark owner names, corporate records and annual reports), they also provide the actual images of the full public record.
Even when information is considered "public," agencies still may not provide free Web access to the information. In these instances, we're no better off than we were 10 years ago, and are forced to use either to a fee-based commercial database, messengers or "snail mail".
FREE PUBLIC RECORDS META-SITES
For an excellent meta-site that lists which states do provide free public records via the Web, go to Search Systems at http://www.searchsystems.net, which provides links to those states. From Search Systems you can link to the New York State Department of Health's Physician Discipline page at http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/opmc/main.htm, The Texas state Controller's Corporations Search at http://ecpa.cpa.state.tx.us/coa/Index.html, and Nevada bankruptcies at http://www.nvb.uscourts.gov/, among numerous other links.
- The California list provides links to public records such as a database of which insurance companies are admitted to do business in California (along with complaint information), the Unclaimed Property database and the docket sheet and actual documents from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, S.D. Another useful meta-site that is maintained by BRB Publications contains links to more than 300 local, state and federal websites at http://www.brbpub.com/pubrecsites.asp. These include vital statistics in Colorado (http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hs/certs.asp) and death certificates in Maine (http://portalx.bisoex.state.me.us/pls/archives_mhsf/archdev.death_archive.search_form;) and Kentucky (http://ukcc.uky.edu:80/~vitalrec/), as well as corporate records (California's Secretary of State added its corporate records in late 1999 at http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/list.html) and select county assessor records of numerous states.
