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What Are Public Record?

By Claire Dowell


The recording of man's activities has existed since ancient times. In the earliest organized civilizations, the need to record taxes, disputes, prisoners, and so on has already been established. For instance, in ancient Babylon, recordings of events are all etched via cuneiform writing on clay tablets. Such activities have benefitted succeeding generations, and have continued to do so for years to come.

Public records are any forms of media that contains important data, and are preserved by the government for its informational value. Furthermore, these documents are made available to the general public for a handful of uses. Examples of public records include documentations of vital statistics such as births, marriages, deaths and divorces, criminal records, census reports, government spending reports, and public documents, among others.

It is important to remember that public records serve a variety of purposes. This premise is one of the main reasons why such recordings are made available to the public. For example, marriage licenses formally legalize a celebrated union between husband and wife, divorce records officially terminate a dysfunctional marriage after the approval of a judge in a Court of Law, and arrest records are vital requirements in background checking for employees in most companies around the world to ensure that quality assurance standards are maintained, and future risks are mitigated. Moreover, making reports of government activities are made public for accountability and transparency. Aside from its many legal implications, public registers are also important in interpreting, studying and establishing statistical, socioeconomic, and demographic trends in a jurisdiction. Without knowing the things that shaped our world and us as individuals, we would have a lesser sense of identity.

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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