Research Guide Education | Sunlight Research

Ancestry Yearbook Archive

Description:

The Ancestry Yearbook Archive allows you to search a database of scanned U.S. school yearbooks from 1900 until 2016. You can search using a person’s name, their birth year, and where they lived. You can also search by keyword and publication date.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Associated People

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1265/

Background Check Websites

Description:

If you don’t have access to TLO or LexisNexis, use these links to check out alternative options. These are paid resources.

Resource Type:

Proprietary Databases

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Associated People

https://www.intelius.com/

https://www.ussearch.com/

https://checkr.com/

https://www.mysmartmove.com/

https://www.beenverified.com/

Bing Visual Search

Description:

Use Bing Visual Search to search the internet using images instead of words. Using this tool, you can find similar images, products, and pages that include an image.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://www.bing.com/images/

Classmates.com

Description:

Classmates.com is an online social network for U.S. high school alumni and an archive of nearly half a million digitized school yearbooks. The archive is searchable by high school and student name. It includes student and alumni photos.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Associated People

http://classmates.com

Crunchbase

Description:

Crunchbase is a database and search tool providing information about businesses with a particular focus on tech companies and startups. Results compile information on company ownership, governance, funding, markets and news coverage.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Professional History, Educational History

https://www.crunchbase.com/discover/organization.companies

E-Yearbook.com

Description:

E-Yearbook.com is a collection of archived scans of U.S. secondary and college yearbooks. The site also archives some international and military yearbooks.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Associated People

http://e-yearbook.com/

FamilySearch Catalog: Yearbook

Description:

The FamilySearch Digital Library has various searchable books, including yearbooks. You can search by name, birthplace and keywords.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Associated People

https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/

Ferretly

Description:

Ferretly is a paid research tool that aggregates social media activity from an individual’s accounts on different platforms.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://www.ferretly.com/

Findmypast

Description:

FindMyPast is a genealogy website that collects certain archival records. Using its advanced World search, researchers can collect information on an individual, their family or their connections by name, location and types of records. In addition to birth/death and family history records, FindMyPast has some historical professional and educational records archived.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://search.findmypast.com/search-world-records-in-education-and-work/and_schools-and-education

Getty Images reverse image lookup

Description:

Getty Images search allows you to reverse image search through Getty’s news, celebrity, and sports coverage, along with stock images in their archive.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Associated People

https://www.gettyimages.com/

Google Advanced Search

Description:

Google Advanced Search uses Boolean operators, which allow you to search by including, excluding or combining exact words or phrases. Google Advanced Search also allows you to narrow results by language, file type, domain and other variables. Check out Sunlight’s Advanced Internet Search Tip Sheet to learn how to find exactly what you’re looking for on the internet. It includes a comprehensive list of basic and advanced search operators, search tips and strategies, and more.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://www.google.com/advanced_search

Google Dataset Search

Description:

Google Dataset Search is a search engine for datasets. You can use a simple keyword search to discover datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the internet. For instance, a search for ‘politicians’ will return databases including Work With Data’s Politicians from the United States list and GESIS’ extracted Politician data from Wikipedia and DBPedia.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/

https://blog.google/products/search/discovering-millions-datasets-web/

Google Fact Checking

Description:

Google Fact Check Explorer combines the work of fact checkers, journalists and researchers by aggregating fact checking and misinformation reporting from outlets and agencies around the world. You can search by topic or by people connected to a fact- checked issue. You can also upload photos in the “search fact checks” bar to see fact checks related to an image and when it first appeared online.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://toolbox.google.com/factcheck/explorer/search/list:recent;hl=en

Google Image Search

Description:

Google Image Search allows users to search for images by keyword or any of Google’s advanced search parameters. It also allows for reverse image searches using images and links.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://images.google.com/

Google Scholar

Description:

Google Scholar is an academic journal and patent search engine. It provides a comprehensive search of scholarly journals, databases, preprint servers and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) archives.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://scholar.google.com/

Local Newspapers

Description:

Newspaper archives preserve digital records of newspapers published going back decades or even centuries and may include information about an individual, their family and their professional connections that search engines might not index.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Professional History, Political History, Educational History, Associated People

https://www.newspapers.com/

Pinterest Visual Search Tool

Description:

The Pinterest Visual Search tool allows you to take a picture of an item and use it to search for products on Pinterest.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Social Media, Associated People

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/230809549630877500/

TinEye

Description:

TinEye is a reverse image search engine. When uploading an image, you can find out where it came from, how it’s being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there are higher resolution versions.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://tineye.com/

University Registrars

Description:

Calling the university’s registrar is the most straightforward way to verify an individual’s claimed degree. Some universities will not verify a candidate’s degree without the person’s signed authorization, though. In such cases, it may still be possible to verify the degree by finding a commencement program, yearbook, university press releases on notable alumni, alumni newsletters or archives of student newspaper articles.

Resource Type:

Telephone

Area of Investigation:

Educational History

This is an offline resource.

Valital

Description:

Valital is a paid resource that searches publicly available information. Using it, you can extract, filter and analyze online media on people and organizations you’re researching. It creates a well-organized clip search that makes it easy to know where to start with your research.

Resource Type:

Media and Other Open Sources

Area of Investigation:

Background and Family, Educational History, Professional History, Political History, Civil Litigation and Criminal Cases, Nonprofits, Campaign Finance, Personal Finances, Social Media, Associated People

https://www.valital.com/