PEOPLE

The focus of Internet Prospector 's very first Biography page was Election '94. It wasn't easy finding political information online. How times have changed! We managed to find the bios of only a handful of members of Congress via the U.S. House of Representatives gopher. Still, we knew, somehow, that more was in store for the Web. Other early finds include:

CONTENTS:

• Minnesota e-Democracy
• Findlaw: West's Legal Directory
• Kentucky Vital Records
• Internet Movie Database

MINNESOTA E-DEMOCRACY

Once a gopher providing feature stories and candidate profiles, e-Democracy has grown into a comprehensive Web site that features include links to presidential campaign information, election news, nonprofit resources, humor and more.

You can find links to the candidates' press releases, speeches, positions and, of course, biographies. Also find blogs and audio and video archives, sites discussing campaign finance and polls, forums, meetups and a look back to the primaries and caucuses.

http://www.e-democracy.org/

FINDLAW: WEST'S LEGAL DIRECTORY

West's Legal Directory was first covered in January, 1995. Back then, you could search this gopher using data fields, for example: NA for name (NA=John AND NA=Smith); ED for education (ED= Harvard), CY for City. Aren't you glad we don't have to do that anymore?

Now at

http://lawyers.findlaw.com/

the search methodology on the site, which has partnered with Thomson Legal Record, is much easier. On the left side of the page, click on Search by Name (firm or lawyer) or Search by Experience (select from a drop-down box of categories). Using those forms, you can narrow your search by location or practice area. Handy tabs at the top of each page make it easy to go back to your hit list or start a new search.

West's Legal Directory unfortunately will sometimes provide "featured sponsors" at the top of your hit list; scroll down for the ones who didn't pay to advertise.

http://lp.findlaw.com

KENTUCKY VITAL RECORDS

In April, 1995, this gopher was an early sign that perhaps we wouldn't be spending the rest of our careers searching for public records in dusty courthouse basements.

From the comfort of our offices, we can search deaths from 1911-1992, marriages from 1973-93 (except for 1984-85) and divorces from 1973-1993. The data you get back is just the most basic information (name, date of death, place, race, sex). You can restrict your search using codes for residence at the time of death for deaths from 1911-1986 only. Results are limited to 25 hits. Append an asterisk to your search term for extended searches of spelling variations.

Note that the data was obtained for a 1994 research project and it doesn't seem as though it will be updated. The site managers also acknowledge missing data and spelling errors.

http://ukcc.uky.edu/~vitalrec/

INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE

This is like finding a baby picture of someone you love. Here's what I wrote in June, 1995:

The Internet Movie Database is an international volunteer effort coordinated via the USENET newsgroup rec.arts.movies. The objective of the database is to provide useful and up to date movie information *freely* available on-line, across as many systems as possible.

The Internet Movie Database is now owned by Amazon.com and is visited by over 20 million people each month. It provides biographies on actors, directors and other crew members, as well as movie plot summaries, reviews, trivia and entertainment industry news.

In 1995, I credited colleague Pam Smith for this remarkable find -- thanks again!

http://www.imdb.com/

Pam Patton

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