The Washington Post provides a free online database of all Congressional voting records for the House of Representatives and Senate from 1991 to the present.

You can access the Washington Post Congressional voting records database at The U.S. Congress Votes Database

Student records from colleges and universities can be a great source of personal background information on current and former students, provided you can obtain them. Student records can include various things, like class transcripts and grades; written evaluations; financial aid records; loan collection records and disciplinary records.

Most colleges and universities have their own procedures and policies governing the release of student records and must adhere to Federal and state privacy and public record laws, like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). As a result, it is nearly impossible to find one source of information that covers every college and university student record policy.

In general, student record requests are handled through the university Registrar’s office, which may involve other university departments for certain specific student record requests.

The best way to find information on a particular university’s student record policies and procedures is to do a search on Yahoo or Google for student records as they relate to the given university.

Some possible search suggestions follow in bold:

student records policy Kansas State University

or, if you know the university’s domain name, more specifically:

student records site:ksu.edu

There is a lot of talk about what has come to be known as “Web 2.0″, but not much in the way of it being a new goldmine for public record searching. Web 2.0 can be loosely defined as the collaborative web. Web content is no longer in the hands of a few techie web masters and a handful of search engines. Web content is now created by the masses for the masses.

With the growing popularity of blogs, social network sites and collaborative projects like Wikipedia, the new web ( Web 2.0 ) is being created by anyone with an internet connection. Some of the very people who complain about the dangers of traditional public record access and their names and phone numbers being published in online white pages are the same people who have no trouble posting all types of information about themselves in blogs; online communities and social network sites, like MySpace, Friendster and FaceBook. As a result, Web 2.0 is fast becoming a goldmine for a new form of public record searching.

Old public record sources will always be the best way to find detailed information like civil and criminal records and property assessor records; but Web 2.0 sites will be the place to search to find out all sorts of personal information like, biographical records; resumes and employment history; educational background; interests and hobbies and, yes, even pictures. This is the type of personal information and psychological insights that traditional public record sources will never be able to match.

Just as free online classifieds are making traditional newspaper classifieds obsolete and mass journalism and blogging are destroying the big news outlets; the personal content of Web 2.0 could make paid databases a thing of the past. Take notice, Accurint et. al.

Here is a freely browsable database of crimes reported in the city of Chicago and plotted by location on a customized Google Map.

You can search the Chicago crime database by crime type; street; date; police beat; zip code; ward; location; city map or route.

You can search the Chicago crime database at Chicago Crime

Property tax and county assessor records can provide great information when doing asset searches as well as people searches.  Assessor records vary by state, county and city, but they often provide fairly reliable information on property ownership; assessed property values and taxes along with the property owner’s name and mailing address.

As a result property tax and county assessor records can often be used to locate property assets as well as find information for contacting a person.  State, city and county assessor sites can now be found for each state on the Skipease site under the Public Records section.  Click on the state link that you want city / county assessor listings for, then choose the ‘Property Tax Assessors’ link for that state to view the available listings.  Some city / county assessor sites have free online searchable databases, while others list phone and address contact information.  Please understand that most of these sites have disclaimer policies posted regarding the reliability of the public record information available on their sites.  In addition, Skipease accepts no responsiblity for the information provided by any of the sites that we link to and your use(s) of the information found on these sites is soley your responsibility.

You can access the state public record listings at State & Local Public Records  .  Choose a state and then choose the ‘Property Tax Assessors’ link for that state to find a scroll menu of available sites.  You can use the bookmark link above the Google Search boxes to add the page to your favorites menu on your browser for future access.  New city / county assessor sites will be added as they become available.

Today I received a request for an online US Federal Bankruptcy Court locator.  So far the best resource we have for locating Federal Bankruptcy Courts as well as other Federal Courts is located at US Courts – Court Links .  You can search by court type, city, state, zip code and county.

Other Federal public record sources can be found on Skipease  at Federal Public Records Links .

Thanks and good luck with your people searches and public records searches.

People Search
Public Record Search

The Center for Disease Control maintains a convenient directory of state vital record sources and associated public record fees for obtaining birth record, marriage record and death record information. 

You can access the CDC vital record directory at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/howto/w2w/w2welcom.htm .

Google does very little to promote their US Federal Government search engine ‘Google Uncle Sam’, but some professional public records searchers and online researchers believe that it is actually a better search engine than First Gov for locating US Government records.

You can access Google’s Uncle Sam search at http://www.google.com/unclesam 

First Gov is the US Government’s Official Web Portal.  You can search and find public records and other government information from this search engine and records directory. 

Use the search feature to locate the records you are looking for or browse the directory by area or branch of government.  You can access the First Gov site at http://www.firstgov.gov/ .

The National Association of Counties publishes an excellent online US county directory search that allows you to hunt down county web sites, official contact information and public records sources with ease.

Use the Find A County map to find county information and public records for a given state.  Click on a state, select a county link to find county official contact information; county web sites ( if any ); county demographic information; county court locations and other county-related record information.

Not sure what county a city or zip code is located in?  Looking for a county official?  Use NACO’s search page to find these and other county-related information searches — County Searches and County Official Searches .