How to Find Out Anything by Don MacLeod

• Research is the process of finding out for yourself what somebody else already know.
• Getting past a dependence on Google and other search engines is the focus of this book. As all good librarians know, there’s a lot more useful information in the world than what search engines can deliver.
• Knowing how to work through a research problem will allow you to reliably find whatever it is that you need to know, be it frivolous or profound.
• The first thing a researcher needs to learn is the art of crafting a question. This is where all good librarians begin their searches, and you should too.
• If you don’t know what you are looking for, how will you know when you’ve found it?
• Questions come in two varieties: open-ended and factual. The difference between the two is remarkable.
• Open-ended questions ask for opinions and offer no definitive answer. Such questions, although frequently very interesting, do not readily allow for a solution.
• To become a skilled researcher, step number one is learning how to craft the answerable question.
• As long as the questions you ask yourself begin with the words what, when, where, or who--the classic four Ws of journalism school, with the occasional addition of how--then you are well on the way to constructing questions that, when answered, might also illuminate the larger, open-ended question.
• Understanding precisely what you need to know is the difference between successful reasearach and a never-ending slog through the back alleys of the Internet or the dusty shelves of libraries.
• Knowing just how much information you need is another critical aspect of successful research.
• Never compile information yourself if someone else has already done it.
• Don’t take anything you read online at face value.
• Reliable information is as free from bias as possible.
• When you’re evaluating a resource, take into account the source’s inevitable bias, even when it’s presenting seemingly factual information.
• Accurate information withstands scrutiny. The standard for scientific research is that experiment results need to be replicable. The laws of nature don’t change. What happens in one lab ought to also occur in another, so long as the experimental conditions are the same.
• Likewise, facts are the same the world over. They don’t require belief to be true.
• The root of the word detective is “detect”, which means to “discover or determine the existence of”. That’s a fair way to think about research, too.
• One of the best secrets of good research is the ability to use on bit of information to find even more information.
• Footnotes, callouts, and references to other works are the hidden gems that researches should read as closely as the primary text. Don’t ignore them.
• People love to talk; you’ll find that asking for advice can produce tips for finding more information quickly.
• Get into the habit of keeping copious notes.
• Skepticism (not cynicism) is the ally of the researcher. You should always weight the credibility of any source in light of what you already know and never take a fact, opinion, or conclusion at face value until you can verify it.
• Healthy skepticism requires proof; misinformation is more common than the true.
• Double-sourcing is always a good idea. This is the simple process of seeing if reputable sources agree on the facts.
• The smart researcher doubts everything and assumes nothing. The only worthwhile exception to this rule is to assume that an answer to your question exists and that if you follow the correct steps for research, you will find it.
• Tenacity is as much a tool of successful research as curiosity and intelligence. Sticking to the task is important. There are times when locating a needed piece of information is, frankly, tough and tedious and the information you are looking for is as elusive as a hat blowing down the sidewalk in a windstorm.
• Continuing in the face of frustration is as important a research skill as correctly framing your initial question.
• Tenacity is as much a tool of successful research as curiosity and intelligence.
• Google is a paradox. Without it, the Internet is nothing more than an incomprehensible jumble of websites, but, believe it or not, Google actually misses more information than it finds.
• Online information should go through the same critical vetting process material does in print.
• The term deep web refers to the universe of web-accessible information locked away in databases where Google’s spidering computers can’t see it. That limitation is a very serious knock against Google and the most important reason for never depending on it exclusively for online information.
• These days, the bulk of the interesting data is in the database, not on a web page where Google’s computers can find it.
• For academic research, in-depth business searches, tracking down people, or locating historic or hard-to-find data, Google searching doesn’t cut it.
• Searchable databases and their contents are the bread and butter of good research.
• Although the numbers from the experts are always inexact, the deep web is estimated to contain at least four or five times the amount of information that sites publish directly to the web and that is available to Google and other search engine.
• IncyWincy focuses its search power on locating websites that are equipped with queryable database.
• DeepPeep is figuring out how to use a single search page to search multiple databases.
• If you’re interested in learning more about the deep web, try Bright Planet, a company that has pioneered identification of the features of the deep web and is devising a means to exploit it.
• ALthough Google cannot search the deep web, its “Advanced Search” can be an important tool for finding the databases that will lead you there, as you’ll see in the next chapter.
• The tools of Google’s “Advanced Search” deliver the holy grail of search results--namely, a small number of highly relevant hits. Since the average Google search routinely returns an absurd number of hits, getting your list whittled down to a manageable scale is a necessity for the busy researcher.
• “Advanced Search” is how we force Google to be more precise.
• Smart researchers benefit from more control of Google queries when using the quotation marks.
• Quotes around a search phrase tell Google to search for the phrase as a single concept and not as multiple isolated words.
• When your search term has more than one meaning, use the minus sign to knock out meanings you don’t want from the results list: That little minus sign (hyphen) slays a horde of a billion or more false hits.
• An asterisk acts as a wild card, inviting Google to fill in the blank.
• Using brackets tells Google to treat what’s inside literally and to search for it in results.
• Of all the tools Google provides to help you search the web, none is as powerful or as useful as the site/domain search.
• Because most sites have flabby, low-power, built-in search boxes and elaborate menu systems that suck up time as you try to find something, having a way to use Google to reach inside a website and pull back exactly what you need is ideal.
• Of all of Google’s powers, nothing will make your online search better faster than using domain and site restrictions.
• The date filter is a godsend for the researcher who needs to look for time-sensitive information.
• Google normally searches everywhere on a web page, but you can direct the search engine to focus on the title of a page, the URL, or the text a page when needed.
• To look for prices within a range of values, use the numeric range control. You can type out a range in the main Google search box using two periods to separate the values.
• The Wayback Machine, a service of the Internet Archive, stores entire websites dating back to 1996 by periodically copying the sites whole. It is a great archival service that provides an easy way to see the web preserved in electronic amber.
• Google Alerts will email you when new results arrive on a web page or when a news story matching your query is posted to a recognized news site.
• A mash-up of public information on public companies, Google Finance, an aggregation of corporate and financial information, pulls together real-time (or close to real-time) stock quotes, EDGAR filings, business news, blogs, chats, and analytical information all on a single page.
• For one-stop shopping for up-to-the-minute information on companies around the world, Google Finance is a tough act to beat.
• For information, for research, for learning, or for entertainment, there is no other institution quite as willing to share the wealth as a library.
• Even with the internet, a library and its resources still play a critical role in most research projects.
• Most libraries make available a wide range of services designed to boost your research.
• Part of any researchers due diligence is seeing what has been written in the press.
• In addition to providing access to current information, a library also serves as an archive.
• There’s nothing that a self-respecting librarian likes better than a challenging question. To them, research is not a task, it’s a calling, and the satisfaction of locating an answer to a difficult question is the most rewarding part of the profession.
• Reference librarians are every researcher’s secret weapon.
• The best advice I can give you is to take a cue from sensible librarians everywhere and fashion a reference collection of your own.
• To generate a demographic profile of towns, cities, and counties around the nation, use the U.S. Census Bureau’s American FactFinder.
• Frequently, an encyclopedia can jump-start your research by providing a nutshell view of the topic in question.
• A good library catalog is a near-perfect tool for finding experts.
• Living authors are more helpful than dead ones, fi only because they have email.
• DMOZ is a crowd-sourced collection of links organized into a logical taxonomy.
• Reference resources solve one of the basic problems of research, which is knowing where to begin to look.
• In short, if you need information on a subject, you can bet that there is an association just itching to lead you down the path to enlightenment.
• An association is a repository of knowledge for a specific subject and can be counted on to deliver a credible point of view.
• Associations are A-list go-to sources because they love to answer questions. If you show even the slightest bit of interest in an association's subject matter a reputable association will make sure you get to know everything you want.
• Find the right association, and in one place you’ll have experts to quote, guides to additional information, and an attributable source.
• Associations can provide everything from factual data to opinions. When you need to pick someone else’s brain for a change, turn to an association for the information.
• For every political idea, social policy, or disease, an association stands by to explain and defend the cause to the public.
• Advocacy groups bend over backward to publicize their causes and are delighted to share information with anyone who needs it. They do the no-glamour digging for facts, which they give away in hopes of earning attention for their cause.
• Define your problem and think of who would have an interest in providing an answer. A relevant association can usually deliver an authoritative answer very quickly.
• Associations are often made up of professionals who produce reports backed by academic credentials and experience in the field. But regardless of the author, associations stand behind their publications, giving you the benefit of an attributable source.
• Mining the incidental data within white papers is the way professional researchers reduce the number of hours of online search and hit-or-miss emails to possible sources.
• Associations are extraordinarily generous with their information.
• Remember rule number one of research: You need to ask a question that can be answered.
• When we talk about finding people, we’re talking about finding a person’s indicators.
• The gold standard for personal identification, after a birth certificate, is a driver’s license or an equivalent state ID card.
• Take the utmost care to get the correct individual and not someone with the same or very similar name of the person you are looking for.
• The phone book query is the most basic person search of all.
• So what about cell phones? How do you locate someone’s cell phone number? The short answer is that you can’t do it reliably. Unlike landlines, cellphones clearly do not need to be assigned to a specific location. Also, privacy laws that never applied to landlines protect cell phone numbers.
• Reverse phone lookups correlate a phone with an address. With a phone number in hand, a reverse lookup reports on the name of the number's owner and usually an address as well. If you really want to play detective, you can use these address and phone number searches in conjunction with a map service like Google Maps to search for neighbors of the person in question.
• Spokeo is a deep web service that trains its algorithms at public sources, which Spokeo describes as “including but not limited to: phone directories, social networks, marketing surveys, mailing lists, government census, real estate listings, and business websites.”
• The explosion of social networking has made it much easier to chip away at those famed six degrees that theoretically separate everyone in the world.
• For many businesses and certainly for many legal actions, an asset search is an important component of people searing. It is not enough to know where a person lives or what her phone number is. It is frequently important to know what assets an individual controls.
• Hunting for assets is a hunt for the records that document ownership of certain tangible objects.
• It always helps to look into the compensation of a corporation's officers--the salaries and other compensation paid to the five most highly compensated individuals is listed in the 10K or proxy statement.
• Any individual or group who owns 5% or more of the outstanding stock of a company must tell the SEC, and hence the public, about it by filing a Form 13-D. It’s a good way to see how individual investors are loading up on a stock.
• The easiest people in the world to locate are licensed professionals. Precisely because doctors and lawyers and others in the learned professions need to demonstrate to the wider world their qualifications to practice, licenses are required.
• State law varies on exactly which jobs require a bureaucratic stamp of approval, but the way to find out is always the same.
• Pilots also require licensure. Information about them, a group the Federal Aviation Administration quaintly calls “airmen”, is available from the Airmen Inquiry database.
• Licenses are required not only to work in certain occupation but for certain privileges, such as flying a private airplane, owning a horse or a dog, or operating a store that sells alcoholic beverages. Any diligent searcher should go through some of these license databases to obtain addresses and proper names for elusive individuals.
• Part of finding people is finding people with expertise so that they can share with you what they know.
• Experts abound in all fields, and what qualifies a person to be one varies with the discipline.
• Experts come in unlikely packages. A teenager who spends eight hours a day with thumbs securely glued to a cell phone may not be able to name the chemical weight of iridium, but you can count on her, in my humble opinion, to be expertly fluent in the telegraphic language of texting.
• The world opens up when we understand how much learning is walking around in people’s heads, many of whom don’t hold PhDs.
• The ability to tap into the expertise of other people is a very powerful tool.
• Find the expert, find the answer.
• One positive thing to say about criminals--once they’ve been sentenced to prison, they’re easy to find. State jailers and the Federal Bureau of Prisons new offer searchable inmate locators.
• It’s not impossible to track down the famous; you’ll need to work through intermediaries--namely, their agents or publicity people.
• To a great extent, the field of tracking down the details of peoples past is dominated by genealogists, amateur and professional.
• The library is still a viable option for people searching.
• The first step in all company research is to determine the type of company you are looking at.
• Because the sources and techniques of corporate research depend very much on which type of company you’re researching, be clear about what you need to find out from the beginning. Remember, the first rule of research is to know what it is you’re looking for.
• Familiarizing yourself with EDGAR and learning how to comb through its documents are critically important.
• If you had to pick one single EDGAR document to provide the best portrait of a company, you’d choose Form 10-K.
• Exhibits are like a corporation’s legal filing cabinet of important documents.
• Before a company can start selling stocks or bonds, it first has to register with the SEC. The registration statement is an exhaustive collection of information, with an emphasis on the company’s history.
• Rifling through EDGAR documents is the best way to see the nastiest and dirtiest details of a company’s operations.
• Google Finance offers at-a-glance information about public companies from around the globe.
• The laborious part of private company research is cobbling together information from a variety of sources to get a clear portrait of the company.
• Every state secretary of state maintains a searchable database of companies that have registered to do business within the state.
• In short, Form 990 is the window into the operation of tax-exempt organizations.
• Skill at looking up company info should be a basic tool in your reference repertoire.
• Before setting out on any industry research, though, make sure you have a good grasp of the industrial classification codes. These codes are used to precisely describe a specific industry and to sort online databases by industry.
• The two classifications systems that are most widely used are the Standard Industrial Classification Code (SIC) and the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).
• It’s well worth the time to look over the SIC system simply because it is a basic tool for filtering online information systems with precision and accuracy.
• Every industry has one or two periodicals covering the news.
• There is a treasure trove of factual information hiding in plain sight in documents and databases maintained by public agencies.
• Public records are essentially the facts that various branches of government compile as they go about enforcing, interpreting, or creating the law. They’re the documents and data we create by virtue of living in a society that needs to know something about us to function smoothly.
• As the name quite clearly says, public records are accessible to anyone who wants to see them.
• Public records can be categorized into three neat pigeonholes: records that anyone can look at by walking in off the street (or searching online), records that are available for inspection by anyone who can prove a legal need to see them, and records that a public agency doesn’t routinely make public but that must be disclosed when asked.
• Documents or databases that are open to public inspection are the most public of public records.
• Certain records are maintained by public agencies but access to them is restricted to individuals or companies that can prove they have legal interest in them. Likewise, access to vital records--birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licenses--is entirely restricted to those who have a legal right to them.
• Government agencies create documents or keep records of their work that are not routinely made available for public inspection. These materials can be provided to the public, but they are produced only when someone asks for them. In the event that an agency refuses to hand over the records, a citizen may file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) letter to formally request that the agency produce the information.
• Public records research can provide insight about people and companies that can’t be dredged up with a Google search.
• Avail yourself of the now-computerized records from filing clerks around the nation.
• The records held by the executive agencies under the president are where the vast majority of interesting stuff will be found.
• All the rules that federal agencies write are compiled into the multivolume rule book, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).
• Answers to many a research question can be found from the right federal agency.
• The docket is the comprehensive list of documents filed with the court during a trial. When a case commences in court, it is assigned a docket number, and from then on, all papers, motions, and other documents submitted to court in the case are filed on the docket under that number.
• The docket number is the unique identifier for each case and thus is critical to federal case research.
• In many ways the records that the secretary of state collects and manages are some of the most useful of all to the business researcher.
• State courts are where the grittiest legal action takes place. While federal courts listen to disputes about bankruptcy, securities fraud, and tax matters, state courts hear cases about homicides, narcotics, arson, and other criminal matters.
• To obtain any court records, you’ll need to know at least the name of the party or parties in the case and preferable the docket number of the action.
• County clerk’s offices are rich hunting grounds for factual information, particularly liens and real estate records.
• In short, use the county clerk's office as your personal information bank for locating assets, values of buildings and homes, and as a guide to who owns it all.
• Data.gov collects info from around the federal government and applies some interesting algorithmic magic to it.
• The much lauded Wolfram|Alpha is another computational search engine that digests sets of public data and produces interesting results by finding new patterns and insights from the materials it analyzes.
• The almost natural reaction of most public officials is to be secretive. Prying loose what is, after all, information that belongs to the citizenry is good policy. When you come across a federal agency that obstinately refuses to turn over reports or data or other materials that are not otherwise specifically protected, the Freedom of Information Act puts a powerful tool in your hands to compel the officials to comply.
• Know the correct procedure for requesting the records you want to see because agencies are well within their rights to refuse requests that don’t follow the game plan.
• Public records research is like a treasure hunt. By going from one agency to another with your list of needed information in hand, you will secure item after item until you’ve collected all the facts you need.
• Tapping into the vast repositories of the public record is one of the basic skills that all researchers should master. It is hard to overstate the value of being able to get at the billions of bits of data held by public agencies at every level of government.
• The Bureau of Justice Statistics has an extensive collection of searchable databases that illustrates the state of the criminal union.
• Few things are truly hidden anymore.
• The days of obscurity are over. Thanks to Google, the databases of the deep web, online research materials, electronic books, and the knowledge stored in the minds of smart people with whom we can talk, even the most arcane fact is waiting in the open for us.
• The process of finding things out means making connections.
• Research tools are merely ways for you to find out what someone else already knows.
• Ultimately the secret to knowing how to find out anything means learning how to connect with people.