Hello clarette-ga,
Both the US and Germany have nation-wide "white page" searches that
can be conducted on-line without having to specify a particular
location within the country. These searches work best for names that
are not unusually common. A search in the US for "John Smith" will
simply turn up too many results for the system to return a useful
list.
---------------------
You can search the German White Pages at:
http://www.telefonbuch.de/
The site is in German, but near the top of the page, note that there
is a button labeled "English" that will take you to an English version
of the same search page.
Even though the search page asks for a "place", it is not mandatory.
Just enter the name of your friend in the "Name" box (run two searches
and try it both ways: [last name, first name] and vice versa) and
click on "Start". You will get a list (possibly quite a long one) of
names that more or less match your input name.
---------------------
You can search the US white pages in much the same way at:
http://www.switchboard.com/
Again, the site asks for a city and state to search on, but these
fields are not required. Just enter the first and last names in the
appropriate boxes, and click on "Search".
--------------------
Good luck in locating your friend. If anything I have written here is
not clear, or if you have difficulty using the site searches, just let
me know through a Request for Clarification, and I'll be happy to
assist you further.
pafalafa-ga
search strategy: I relied on bookmarked White Pages sites to answer
this question |
Request for Answer Clarification by
clarette-ga
on
27 Jul 2003 07:06 PDT
Thank you - this is very helpful. I found some details which I can
pursue. The other thing is, my friend is a doctor. I was thinking, it
might be easier to find him on some sort of doctor's register. Again,
I wouldn't be able to enter in which town he is practicing though. I
know his area of specialisation though. He could be working in a
hospital. If there is such a register in Germany and in US that would
be a good start. Very many thanks indeed for your help. Much
appreciated. Kind regards.
|
Clarification of Answer by
pafalafa-ga
on
27 Jul 2003 11:18 PDT
Hello clarette-ga,
I'm glad the information I gave you was a help.
In order to follow-up further, I'd like to ask a question to help me
focus my search. What is your friend's area of medical
practice/specialization?
There are many services to search for doctors, and some of them are
specific to a particular area of medicine. Knowing your friend's area
of practice would be a real help.
pafalafa-ga
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
clarette-ga
on
27 Jul 2003 12:45 PDT
His area of specialisation is "Innere Medezin" or "Internist" in
German. I'm not sure what this is in English ! It's to do with all the
internal organs. I hope this helps a little. Many thanks. Kind
regards.
|
Clarification of Answer by
pafalafa-ga
on
27 Jul 2003 13:21 PDT
You can pull up a listing of more than 1,000 doctors practicising
internal medicine in the US at this link:
http://www.yellowpages.com/SearchResult.aspx?page=home&searchform=homesearch&typeorname=type&search=internal+medicine&searchfor=internal+medicine&method=and&city=&state=NATIONWIDE
There are a number of other physician directories that I've found for
the US, but they all require entry of more than just the name --
either a city or or state or zip code, or some other limiting
criteria. Let me know if these are of interest.
In the mean time, I'm still checking on equivalent types of
directories for doctors in Germany. I'll let you know as soon as I
have some more information.
pafalafa-ga
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
clarette-ga
on
27 Jul 2003 15:21 PDT
Many thanks again.
This looked interesting, but mainly they are names of various
institutions / centers. I thought maybe his name would be listed
somewhere - he could possibly be working in one of these institutions,
but without calling each one, difficult to know. This is quite a
difficult task, I know! Grateful for all your help so far. Thanks.
|
Clarification of Answer by
pafalafa-ga
on
27 Jul 2003 19:53 PDT
Hello again, clarette.
We'll have to proceed a step at a time, I think. As I find a new
resource, I'll run it by you to see if it produces any results for
you.
Have a look at the site for the American Board of Medical Specialties:
http://www.abms.org/default.asp
where you can search for doctors by name or by specialty *and* you can
specifiy different countries to search in (most of their directory are
doctors in the US, but they do have a fair number in other countries
as well).
You need to register at the site in order to search, but the process
is simple, and they will instantly email to you a password that you
can use. The whole process took me about three minutes.
When you visit the site, click on the "Who's Certified" button to
bring you to the registration page, and fill in the information.
After you have your password, revisit the site, and click "Who's
Certified" again, and it will take you to the search box, where you
can enter your friend's name, and do (1) a general search, and then
(2) a specific search for the name in Germany (select Germany from the
pull-down menu of countries).
Note that you only need to enter a last name in order to search. In
fact, you don't even need a full name...just the first few letters
will do.
You can also search this site by specialty, such as internal medicine,
rather than name, but I don't know that this would offer any real
advantage...if you know the name, that's the best option to search
under.
------------------
I'll also mention another physician search site at the American
Medical Association. Just go to this link:
http://www.ama-assn.org/aps/amahg.htm
and click on "Search for a Physician".
At the AMA site, you do need to enter a state as well as a name, in
order to search. But I imagine this is a fairly comprehensive
directory and may be worth the effort.
Lastly, I have a note out to a colleague of mine in Germany asking
about additional resources. I'll let you know when I hear back.
Good luck.
pafalafa-ga
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
clarette-ga
on
28 Jul 2003 04:04 PDT
Many thanks. These are really both excellent tools. I will search more
extensively though the second one. I'm not sure the first one would
have so many registered in other countries, since they all need to
belong to their association. I await to hear further news from you.
Thanks for helping me in my search.
|
Clarification of Answer by
pafalafa-ga
on
28 Jul 2003 06:54 PDT
Hello again,
As far as searching for doctors in Germany, my colleague pointed out
an earlier question of yours on the same topic at:
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=180737
We've both agreed that it would be impossible to improve on this list.
These are the best tools available for searching for an individual
doctor anywhere in Germany.
Another possibility, though, is to conduct a general internet search
for your friend. I've extracted some information from an earlier
answer of mine on how to conduct an effective search for a person
using Google and other search tools. I hope this proves useful to
you. Please let me know how things turn out.
pafalafa-ga
-----------------
The internet has made it possible -- for better or worse -- to search
through enormous amounts of text and data for nuggets of information
about any conceivable topic, including individual people. You can
conduct a search yourself, and can also use one or more of the search
services available on the internet, some of which charge a fee, and
others which are free.
While searches on some individuals can readily turn up a treasure
trove of information, searches on others may well come up empty.
There are still many people who -- intentionally or by happenstance --
do not have much of a presence in cyberspace. But you won't know
until you have a look!
In this answer, I'll review the main options and search strategies for
finding information about a person:
--Your first stop on the Internet should be Google, at [
www.google.com ].
Here you can enter the person's name to search for information on the
internet. Although this sounds simple enough, there are many
variations on how and where to search:
a) start by typing just the person's name in the search box. If it's
a very unusual name, you may come up with only a small number of
results. Conversely, common names may yield thousands, even millions,
of hits.
b) If the first search produces an unmanageable number of results,
then try a more restricted search. For someone named Robert Lastname,
for instance, here are some of the various combinations to try in a
Google search:
"Robert Lastname" [NOTE: The quotation marks should be included in
your search]
"Robert * Lastname" [NOTE: the * will pick up any middle initial or
middle name]
"Lastname Robert"
"R Lastname"
"Lastname R"
c) If you know of a nickname the person uses, search on that as well.
For instance, you may want to repeat the above searches using Bob as a
first name, instead of Robert.
d) Conduct the same sort of searches on Google News [ news.google.com
] and Google Groups [ ://www.google.com/grphp? ]. These will pick
up recent news articles that mention the name, as well as any
reference to the name in online discussion groups.
----------
Step 2: Use any/all of the following free internet people search
services to look for additional information:
Refdesk's two lists of search services list dozens of options for
people searching:
http://www.refdesk.com/addsrch.html
http://www.refdesk.com/addsrch1.html
Anybirthday's lookup of birth dates:
http://anybirthday.com/search.htm
Virtual Gumshoe lists a zillion services, both free and fee, that are
well-organized by category:
http://www.virtualgumshoe.com/
For instance, if you know your person's college, you can click on the
"Alumni" link to see if any of the services listed there would be
useful.
----------
Your last stop (for now) should be the HowtoInvestigate site at:
http://www.howtoinvestigate.com/
This site offers additional tips on conducting a people search, and
also links directly to a number of professional services that can
conduct "background checks" on individuals for a fee -- these include
criminal record checks, credit histories, driving records, etc.
-----------------
And in case that's not enough, here is another expertly-answered
"people search" question and answer you might want to look at as well:
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=229876
Best of luck in your search.
pafalafa-ga
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
clarette-ga
on
30 Jul 2003 09:45 PDT
Thank you very much indeed. In my last question re. German
directories you needed to know the location and as you know, I don't
know this. I found these directories not very helpful in the long run
since I'm without this information. I can therefore progress onto your
people search tools as you suggest. Thanks. I will review all of
these.
|
Clarification of Answer by
pafalafa-ga
on
30 Jul 2003 09:59 PDT
Hope they're helpful.
Good luck in your search.
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
clarette-ga
on
01 Aug 2003 02:03 PDT
Thank you.
|
Clarification of Answer by
pafalafa-ga
on
01 Aug 2003 04:39 PDT
Sure thing. Thanks for the kind rating, and good luck to you.
|
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