Open-Source Research

Open-source research here means public records: board packets, meeting recordings, court dockets, state filings, nonprofit tax returns and archived web pages. No hacking, no pretending to be someone else, nothing behind a login that isn’t yours.

Method is the standard every post is held to. This page is the how-to behind it.

1. Write down the question, and what would change your mind

Start with a question, not a conclusion. “What does our library pay for ebooks, and for how long?” is a question. “Our library is overpaying” is a conclusion looking for evidence.

Then write one more line: what would you have to find for your guess to be wrong? I call that the dealbreaker. If you can’t name one, you aren’t researching yet.

2. Find the record itself

A news story or a social post can point you to a record. It isn’t the record. Go get the document it describes. Some places to look:

Meeting records. Agendas, minutes, board packets and recordings. Packets are where contracts and staff memos are attached. Watch Your Board covers where they sit on the common platforms, and some states post them on a public notice site, like Utah’s Public Meeting Notice site.
Contracts and spending. Find Your Library’s Digital-Content Contract walks through it.
Court records. CourtListener is a free search of many federal court dockets.
Nonprofits. ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer has IRS Form 990 filings: revenue, officers and pay.
Businesses. Each state’s secretary of state keeps a business registry. The National Association of Secretaries of State has a menu linking to most of them.
Open meetings law. Your State’s Open Meetings Law, in One Line.

If the record isn’t public, a records request is the next step. Ask for the specific document, by name and date, not “everything about X.”

3. Save what you cite

Web pages change and disappear. Save every page you cite, with the date you saved it. The Wayback Machine’s Save Page Now makes a public copy anyone can check. For PDFs and other files, keep your own copy too.

To check whether a page was already saved, ByeByePaywall opens one link in several services at once. Use its archive.org and archive.today buttons, and cite the archive copy with its date. Its other buttons open paywall-bypass views. Those aren’t archives and nobody can check them later, so don’t cite them.

If something matters a lot, keep a checksum of the file, a short fingerprint that changes if a single byte changes. That’s how you can show later that the document you quoted is the document you saved.

4. Grade every claim

Every factual sentence gets a mark for how well it’s supported. The scale this site publishes with is on Method. Every Claim Gets a Grade explains why the mark matters: deciding which one to use is what makes you go check.

Grade the sentence after the number, too. “The board approved $122,654” is easy to check. “Which means the library is paying more than it used to” is a separate claim, and it needs its own evidence.

5. Treat “there’s nothing” as a claim

“There’s no record of that” is a claim about everything a source holds. It’s also the easiest thing to get wrong, because a search that broke and a search that worked can both come back empty.

Before you write down that something doesn’t exist, search the same source for something you know is there. If that comes back empty too, your search is broken, and you haven’t learned anything yet. Then check a second source.

Watch for the wrong key: a person’s name in a system that searches by ID number, or a company under today’s name when it filed under an older one.

6. Name the parent of every number

For every figure, write down which organization it belongs to, which year, and out of what. A dollar amount in a draft packet and the amount the board later approved can be different numbers. A share of the collection budget and a share of the whole budget tell different stories. Check whether a number is already counted inside another one before you add them together.

7. Keep the claim smaller than the evidence

Say what the document shows, and stop there. “The packet approves $42,000 for a one-year renewal” is supported by a packet that says so. “The library spends $42,000 on ebooks” may not be. Say what the record doesn’t show, too. That’s a finding, not a gap.

8. Have someone argue against it before it goes out

Before a piece publishes now, it gets two more reads. One reader checks each claim against its source. The other assumes every fact is right and argues the piece is still wrong: unfair to someone, leading the reader, or missing the boring explanation. A lot of what I cut gets cut at this step.

You can do this with a colleague. Hand them the draft and ask, “What’s wrong with this?” Not “Does this look okay?” That one only ever gets a yes.

9. Be careful with people

Public officials acting in their public roles are part of the record. Private people usually aren’t. Use a role instead of a name unless the name is the story, and redact names from public forums. If a piece says something serious about someone, ask them first, and say whether they answered.

10. Fix mistakes in the open

When something turns out to be wrong, correct it and add a dated note saying what changed. If you have a correction or a document I should see, email [email protected].

The short version

Start with a question and a dealbreaker.
Get the record itself, not a story about it.
Save it, with the date.
Grade every claim, including the “which means” sentence.
Before you say something doesn’t exist, search for something that does.
Name the organization, year and denominator behind every number.
Say what the record shows, and what it doesn’t.
Ask someone what’s wrong with it before it goes out.