Reference Shelf - Finding Individuals
Reference ShelfMany of the sites listed in this guide were taken from Find Anyone Fast by Richard S. Johnson and Debra Johnson Knox (2001), MIE Publishing. Finding individuals, whether lost classmates, friends, relatives, or other acquaintances, can be a challenging task. This guide lists just a few of many places you could start. Begin by collecting information that you have about the individual: When was the individual born? Where did he or she last live? What was his profession? Clues like these can give you places to look. Next, use the sites listed here, which are arranged by the type of information that you know.
If You Know the Person's Name, Birth Date, and/or Social Security Number
- Where to Write for Vital Records
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/howto/w2w/w2welcom.htm - Information about births, deaths, marriages, and divorces in the 50 states and territories. Some pages linked provide searchable databases, whereas others only allow ordering of vital records.
- Social Security Death Index
http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/ - Covers individuals who have died since 1962 when the records were made available online. May have some exclusions.
If You Know the Person's Name and Profession
— He or She is or was in the Military
- Military.com
www.military.com - Register for a free Buddy Search or search for units. Contains varying information about military personnel, including veterans. Not all military personnel are included.
— He or She is a Pilot
- Landings.com
www.landings.com - Search for pilots who have been certified.
— He or She is an Attorney
- Martindale.com
www.martindale.com - Search for attorneys.
— He or She is a Doctor or Dentist
- ReferenceUSA (Databases/Indexes, UT users only)
- Contains U.S. Business, U.S. Residential, U.S. Health Care (physicians and dentists), Canadian Business, and Canadian Residential. You may search by all states if you don't know the state in which an individual resides.
— He or She is Some Other Kind of Professional
- Print: Encyclopedia of Associations
(Hodges, Ag-Vet Reference Desks HS17.G3) - Search for an association for that profession. Then call the association and ask for contact information for the individual.
You Know a Person's Name and Where They Are Likely to Reside
- ReferenceUSA (Databases/indexes, UT users only)
- Contains U.S. Business, U.S. Residential, U.S. Health Care (physicians and dentists), Canadian Business, and Canadian Residential. You may search by all states if you don't know the state in which an individual resides.
- LexisNexis Academic (Databases/indexes, UT users only)
- Full-text from selected newspapers and court documents. To search newspapers from a geographic region, select Guided News Search and pick a news category, and news source, and a date.
- America 's Newspapers (Tennessee Subset) (Databases/indexes, UT users only)
- "Select 'America 's Newspapers.' Fulltext of Tennessee newspapers: Commercial Appeal (Memphis, 1991-), Jackson Sun ( Jackson , 2003-), Knoxville News-Sentinel (1991-), Leaf Chronicle ( Clarksville , 2000-), Tennessean (Nashville, 1999-)."
- Tax assessors
- Tax assessors from many counties across the U.S. have searchable property tax databases. Go to Google and put in the search tax assessor knox county Tennessee, for example, to find the tax assessor for Knox County. The property tax database will give the address of property the individual owns.
You Don't Know Anything Except the Name
- Political MoneyLine
www.tray.com - Contains a donor name look-up where you can find the political contributions individuals have made since the 1980s.
- Biography and Genealogy Master Index (Databases/indexes, UT users only)
- "Index to biographies on over 4 million people from the beginning of time through the present." Search this database on the chance that the person is famous.
- Google
www.google.com - Background information on the individual on the Internet.
- LexisNexis Academic (Databases/indexes, UT users only)
- Full-text from selected newspapers and court documents. Do a Quick News Search or methodically search all the legal sources for references to the name. Keep in mind that this works best for unusual names.
Related:
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Biography
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Reference Department
Page Maintained by:
Jeanine Williamson Engineering Librarian
152 Hodges Library
1015 Volunteer Boulevard
Knoxville, TN 37996
(865) 974-9164
jwilliamson@utk.edu
Updated October 3, 2006