Digging for dirt -- online

July 5, 2005

KATE GOLDEN\Frontiersman reporter

PALMER -- If you need to delve into the past of an ex-boyfriend, a local company or a future employee, you're in luck: It just got easier to do a background check in the Valley. The wait in line for the lone computer at the Palmer Courthouse is replaced with a mouse-click to www.courtrecords.alaska.gov.

CourtView, the Alaska Courts' records system, went online this week. Enter a name, and you can see all the cases, closed or open, for which a person has been a plaintiff or a defendant in Palmer, Fairbanks and Anchorage.

In Palmer, the records go back to January 1988. Pre-2002 records are more limited and somewhat cryptic, as they were entered in an older software system.

So far the server occasionally stalls, but it's still faster than a trip to the courthouse. The information systems department is ironing out a few kinks as the Web site gets rolling, according to employee Sharon Chen.

"Initial feedback has been good," she said.

A few tips: Confidential case information is not available online. Nor is information about protective proceedings, though this will change in the future, according to the Web site. Those documents must be obtained the old-fashioned way: by contacting the court clerk at the Palmer Courthouse.

While the Case Summary screen will tell you which felonies your John Doe was charged with, don't assume he was convicted. To know for sure, or to read the charging documents, you still have to take a trip to the courthouse.

And remember that many people have the same name. The Web site also warns "employers, credit agencies and others" to verify identity before taking any adverse action against someone whose name appears in the database.

Contact Kate Golden at 352-2284 or kate.golden@frontiersman.com.