For residential searches: when searching someone, often a person's name is not completely entered in a telephone directory listing. In many cases the person's first name is only indicated by the first initial.

If you are looking for someone in a particular town and recieve no search results, try searching only by that state. People can move, of course, and sometimes records are not updated immediately (even as Reference Solutions indicates its records are updated regularly).

For business searches: there can be numerous matches for one company name (e.g. IBM), so you might need to delve further into the search results to determine which is the true company (or subsidiary) you really want to research.

You can often determine "which company owns what company" by clicking the "up arrow" icon on the line of the company in question. This should take you to the "parent company."

Only U.S. companies (or foreign companies with U.S. district offices) are listed. For assistance on finding information concerning international companies, please speak with a librarian at our Reference Department.