How to dig up the dirt you need

After assisting in research on an article regarding Community Colleges of Spokane (CCS) hiring the new Chancellor despite past allegations, I found these few following links and shortcuts extremely helpful (and free):

- Visit harvester.census.gov to find a single audit database. This can be helpful when trying to find a past evaluation on a person or an organization.

- When looking for a home phone number in the US, type "rphonebook: full name, state" in a Google search.

- If trying to find court case filings, you can usually find county reports on their website, for example: Denver, Colorado. Beware that not all civil cases can be filed in this manner, if only looking up a name. Also, some states like Colorado require you to pay for a state court case report and are not open record like other states.

- Not getting the info you know you have rights to? Visit splc.org to get a sample FOIA letter or fill out your own.

Make sure to read the featured story above to see how some of these links were implemented for research.