I like to share the tools of the trade, which hopefully encourage some of you to improve your sleuthing. Here’s an information tool that has been around for a long time, with periodic updates along the way. I have long considered it a great resource.

It’s called Reporter’s Desktop, and is a tool developed by investigative reporter Duff Wilson. I think it originally dates back to the period in the late 1990s when Wilson was working at the Seattle Times, and was active in Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE).

Reporter’s Desktop is sort of a Swiss Army Knife that’s useful for starting an investigation, identifying leads, and stretching your investigative imagination. It contains a dizzying array of links to information and documents of all kinds.

There are some links that are now outdated, but overall the Desktop holds up very well. It was last updated about a year ago. I’m guessing new tools are being added, while outdated links are slower to be removed.

One of the first links at the top of the page is intended for backgrounding a person–“WHO IS JOHN DOE — and where to get the paper on him.”

It leads you through all the various ways in which a person leaves a trail through public records of many kinds. Using this as a guide, you can fill in local sources of things like court records, campaign finance reports, or real estate records.

In any case, at least browse through the Reporter’s Desktop to get a flavor for the range of sources that are out there. It’s always good to have this information when you suddenly have a particular issue you need to research in a hurry.