These were the quotations and brief notes I lifted from the book as I was reading:
“Saber es poder.”
“To become a skilled researcher, step number one is learning how to craft the answerable question.”
“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.”
“When you’re evaluating a resource, take into account the source’s inevitable bias, even when it’s presenting seemingly factual information.”
“One of the best secrets of good research is the ability to use one bit of information to find even more information.” (A term I’m calling “breadcrumbing.”)
“Skepticism (not cynicism) is the ally of the researcher.”
“Tenacity is as much a tool of successful research as curiosity and intelligence.”
“Online information should go through the same critical vetting process material does in print.”
“‘Advanced Search’ is how we force Google to be more precise.”
“That little minus sign (hyphen) slays a horde of a billion or more false hits.” #google
“Even with the Internet, a library and its resources still play a critical role in most research projects.”
“A library card gives you entrée into a club that is at once the most and least exclusive in the world.”
“The beauty of the catalog is that you can look over the entire library landscape in one place, quickly mastering a vast domain with some very simple searches.”
“In addition to providing access to current information, a library also serves as an archive.”
“Reference librarians are every researcher’s secret weapon.”
“For more in-depth research, especially when looking in great detail for a specific subject, it is helpful to rely on the services of a special-interest library.”
“To generate a demographic profile of towns, cities, and counties around the nation, use the U.S. Census Bureau’s American FactFinder.”
“An association is a repository of knowledge for a specific subject and can be counted on to deliver a credible point of view.”
“Find the right association, and in one place you’ll have experts to quote, guides to additional information, and an attributable source.”
“For every political idea, social policy, or disease, an association stands by to explain and defend the cause to the public.”
“Mining the incidental data within white papers is the way professional researches reduce the number of hours of online search and hit-or-miss emails to possible sources.”
“When we talk about finding people, we’re really talking about finding a person’s indicators.”
“If people prefer not to leave the ordinary trails that the rest of us do simply by being a member of society, your hunt may never pan out.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Hunting for assets is a hunt for the records that document ownership of certain tangible objects.”
“The library is still a viable option for people searching.”
Don’t forget to search for people via their professional and occupational licenses, or their statuses (like court documents, criminal history records, university tenure records, etc.).
“The first step in all company research is to determine the type of company you are looking at.”
Securities and Exchange Commission (created by Congress in 1934)
Securities Act of 1933 and Securities Exchange Act of 1934
“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.”
“Look to the 8-K for press releases on urgent subjects, announcements or takeover attempts, or public acknowledgement that the SEC is investigating 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.”
“There is a treasure trove of factual information hiding in plain sight in documents and databases maintained by public agencies.”
“The records held by executive agencies under the president are where the vast majority of interesting stuff will be found.”
“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.”
“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.”