Hard Rock Mining Biographical Research on the Internet PART II Part III

BACKGROUND TOOLS: Digging Deeper, Smarter LAST UPDATE: August 1999

Contents:

Search Engines Intelligent Agents

Online News Biographical  Directories

Other

OK. You've located where in the world your subject is and perhaps have discovered additional background information, such as employment affiliation. The next step involves combining  previous locator tools with specialized background sources. Be prepared to dig deeper into online news, explore corporate records, and review professional directories.

Pay Per View: Some engines sell words to companies so that references to that company or related products appear higher in a ranking of retrieved search hits.                     Return to top         Lost in Action: Password-protected pages and databases are generally unavailable to robots.           Return to top                         Free  News Archives: Alas, this once wonderful characteristic of news libaries is becoming a thing of the past.                                                   Return to top                                         Return to top               Bonanza!

Search Engines Familiarize yourself with the particular search syntax of the index you are using. The key with prominent or common names is to produce manageable and targeted results. For instance, look at the different results below from three search strategies below using Infoseek's  search syntax. After the initial query, the plus sign (+) operator is used to require additional terms to be present. This accomplishes two tasks: zeroes in our your subject and reduces the number of hits. Finally, the "title" operator is used to require the terms "Jane Fonda" to be present in the document's title. Sample Biographical Searches Jane Fonda, movies Produces 2.9 million hits +Jane Fonda +movies Produces 252 hits +Jane Fonda +movies +biography Produces 19 hits +Jane Fonda +movies +biography +title:Jane Fonda Produces two biographies More Search Engine Tips AltaVista Meets Bill Gates http://www.internet-prospector.org/search.html/ Leveraging your search by using wild cards and AltaVista's "refine" search tool. Use Search Engines for Site-Specific Searches http://www.internet-prospector.org/found0397.html/ Search Engine Watch One of the best places on the Web to keep up with search engine developments Intelligent Agents Agents (robots, spiders, etc.) are lonely souls whose destiny it is to perpetually roam the Internet, automatically performing tasks and reporting results back to their webmaster. Such agents are a wellspring of future potential for prospect researchers, as these devises become more sophisticated and readily accessible to the non-programmer.  Here's an example from Dartmouth: The Informant! allows one to set up a personal portfolio of search queries or Web sites you want to monitor. Then select how often you wish the Informant to alert you by email of new hits from your saved searches. Slick! Variation on a Theme:  GoNetwork Express (formerly Infoseek) http://express.infoseek.com/subdocuments/expressdetails.html Searches multi-engines at once and allows saved searches. There are reports that installing this application can cause MS Windows systems problems. Searchable Online News Searchable online newspapers are a great source for locating or backgrounding people. And it's not just the prominent that appear in print. New media publishers are finding creative ways to offer expanding news coverage and search options. Information filters and push technologies are the emerging trend. Such news services allow the reader to create a custom profile with saved searches or topics of special interest delivered directly to one's computer. Pointcast's direct-feed news screensaver is a good example. Electric Library http://www.elibrary.com/ Find more than 150 newspapers, nearly 800 magazines, national and international news wires. Search and retrieve headlines free, full-text is fee based. Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/ The L.A. Times' Hunter is an example of how the reader can create a custom news profile with saved searches. Searchable archives are available. Browse headlines and lead sentences for free. Full-text is fee-based. Newslink http://www.newslink.org/ Plug your topic into a universal search prompt to select and search news-only search engines. Browse or search worldwide links to some 5,000 newspapers.  NewsPage http://www.newspage.com/ Includes fee-based email delivery of customized electronic newspaper from some 600 news sources. Search the following free sources and retrieve full-text news stories.     Business Wire        Daily Independent Energy     Canada NewsWire      FCC News Releases     Commerce Business    Newsbytes News Network     DOD News Releases    PR Newswire Newspaper Archives on the Web State-by-state listing of online newspaper archives, including access and fee information.Thanks to Margot Williams for this tip. Desktop News Feeds & Tickers:            Dazed and confused by the choices? Break through the clutter with the Prospector's comparison test of four leading tickers. WWW Tip: Increasingly, online news sources require registration with a username and password. If the registration is free, devise a username and password that is useable at all sites. This avoids the headache of trying to remember a multitude of login terms. Try bookmarking your page after successfully logging in. Then, simply launch your bookmark the next time you want to connect. May not always work. Biographical Directories Lives http://amillionlives.com/ One of largest biographical directories on the Web American Medical Association's Physician Select     http://www.ama-assn.org/aps/amahg.htm/ Biographical directories     http://www.internet-prospector.org/bio-dir.html Try these professional and other specialized biographical directories reviewed by the Internet Prospector. Martindale Hubbell     http://www.martindale.com/    900,000 attorney and firm profiles WWW Tip: Lost? Forget where you have been on the Web? Netscape users, pull down your WINDOW menu from the tool bar and select HISTORY to review a list of sites you have visited, create a bookmark, or launch to the selected site. Communicator, Netscape's newest browser, allows user preferences for a history up to three months old. Other Be creative, dig deep and use your search skills and discover background resources particular to your market. Build a search strategy that brings home the gold. Corporate Investigative Services http://www.hsv.tis.net/~pvteye/     Enter the gumshoe world of private investigators. Many links to free reference databases. EDGAR Securities Exchange Commission (Look here for proxies [DEF 14A] which provide brief professional/civic affiliation background of corporate insiders of public companies.) EdgarOnline http://people.edgar-online.com/people/ Search by insiders name. Premiums service includes autoalert. FreeEDGAR http://www.freeedgar.com/ Register and get _free_ email alerts whenever a company (or its insiders) on your watch list files with the S.E.C.. Securities Exchange Commission EDGAR http://www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm/ Edgar and Family: SEC data on the Web Background, reviews, and comparison chart of leading Edgar data providers Library of Congress - National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/rlinamc.html/     Search database of archive collections nationwide by personal or corporate name. Retrieval includes collection's abstract, from which you can glean biographical clues and pointers to other sources. FORWARD to Capacity Tools BACK to Locator Tools BACK to Introduction REFERENCE DESK | Archives | Corporations | Grants | International | News Online | People | Tools Suggest an Internet nugget. Write the Assay Office -- credit to the finder. Copyright © 1994:1999 Internet Prospector Inc. HOME