Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference
Columbia University

Catalog search engines

• Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com

Key word search engines

• Altavista http://www.altavista.digital.com (advanced search engine)
• HotBot http://www.hotbot.com
• Excite http://www.excite.com

Specialty Search Engines

Usenet Searchers

• DejaNews http://www.dejanews.com

People Searchers

• Whowhere http://www.whowhere.com
• 411 http://www.four11.com

Mapping Programs

• Yahoo mapping http://maps.yahoo.com/yahoo/
• Mapblaster http://www.mapblast.com

News Search Engines

• Newsbot http://www.wired.com/newbot/
• News.com http://www.news.com/
• The Wire http://wire.ap.org/

Public Records Source

• OSHA workplace inspections http://www.osha.gov/cgi-bin/est/est1
• Social Security Administration death records http://www.ancestry.com/ssdi/advanced.htm
• Government Printing Office (full text search) http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/search/default.html
• Aircraft Registrations/pilots
• SEC Records (EDGAR) http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/srch-edgar
• Oregon UCC filings http://www.sos.state.or.us/cgi-bin/uccsrch.htm
• State corporation listings
  • Rhode Island http://www.state.ri.us/submenus/corpindex.htm
  • Missouri http://168.166.2.55/corporations/
  • North Carolina http://www.sips.state.nc.us/secbin/search.ptr
  • Maine http://www.state.me.us/sos/corpinfo.htm
  • New Mexico http://www.state.nm.us/scc/sccfind.html
  • Illinois http://www.sos.state.il.us/cgi-bin/corpname

Stock Quotes

• Yahoo stock quotes http://quote.yahoo.com/?u

FTP Search

• Fast FTP http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no/

Sources

• Profnet http://www.profnet.com

Other interesting things

• Reporters Committee - all public records laws
• Thomas Register http://www2.thomasregister.com/index.cgi?balancing
• West's Legal Directory http://www.wld.com/attorney/Welcome.asp
• The Codex - Stalk the Net - Collection of good links http://www.thecodex.com/search.html#People Stalking

Examples of boolean searches:

• Find the term "drew" or the term "sullivan" (698,368 hits)

drew or sullivan

• Find the terms "drew" and "sullivan" (16,364 hits)

drew and sullivan

• Find the term "drew" close to the term "sullivan" (370 hits)

drew near sullivan

• Find "drew" and "sullivan" separated by a space (99 hits)

"drew sullivan"

• Find the term "sullivan" with either of the terms "drew" or "andrew" (57,913 hits)

(drew or andrew) and sullivan

• Find the literals "drew sullivan" or "andrew sullivan" (1,164 hits)

"drew sullivan" or "andrew sullivan"

• Find the literal term "drew sullivan" and either the literal term "associated press"or the term AP (19 hits)

"drew sullivan" and (ap or "associated press")