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Public Records Online Search Procedure

By Claire Dowell


The earliest organized societies and ancient civilizations have established means of archiving events, quarrels, scientific discoveries, and taxation policies. Examples of these deeds can be found among the ruins of ancient Babylonian, Aztec, and Egyptian structures and artifacts. Such activities have been passed on from generation to generation, and have helped establish our identities as a people and the world as we know it.

Public records are documents and pieces of information that are not generally considered confidential. These documents are duly stored, protected and distributed by government entities for public use. Documents that fall under the category of public records are most legal actions, documentations of vital events such as births, deaths, marriages, and divorces, criminal or arrest records, and government reports, among others.

The multiple implications and uses of public documents in most legal and statistical processes is the reason why they are considered as such. For instance, background checking of potential employees via asking for their criminal record is standard protocol amongst companies and workplaces in order to prevent likely liabilities. Moreover, vital records such as marriage licenses and divorce records are commonly procured for a number of processes, such as to formally declare the legalization of a marriage and a divorce, after the approval of the appropriate authorities. Public records in the form of government transparency reports also allow healthy scrutiny from the populace. Studies regarding demographic and socioeconomic trends can also be done by utilizing the data contained within public records.

In the United States, public records are guided by the Freedom of Information Act. In addition to this act, different states have their own form of this legislation. In other words, regulations concerning public record access and distribution vary from state to state. For example, public records access and retrieval in the State of New York is fairly easy, compared to the many exemptions and restrictions in certain categories of documents in Pennsylvania.

As previously mentioned, the maintenance and dispensation of public registers differ per state. Some states implement a centralized, state-wide approach in the procurement of such documents, while some keep it on a county level to narrow down search efforts.

Human nature dictates man to seek out new ways to improve living conditions. The technical revolution that is the 21st century, led by the Internet, has successfully pacified this demand. The Internet's use has transcended from simply being a communication and information highway. Nowadays, almost all goods and services known in existence can now be purchased online and conveyed the next day. With the objective of serving more end-users and individual requests, services concerning records searches have made their way in the World Wide Web, thanks to government agencies and independent record retrieval providers. Public records search is one of the most common search deeds done via the Internet because of the fast turnaround of results, without conceding quality.




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