When we talk about public records, what comes to mind is the controversy surrounding them on the legality of giving access to these records to whoever wants to look at them.

Public records are those records that show a person’s life history right from their birth records, marriage records, divorce records, death records, criminal records, civil records, phone directories, family history, property records, adoption records, driving records, business records, unclaimed assets, immigration records and several other records on a person.
People search for these records and wish to access them for their own reasons, such as needing to check on a person to validate or find further information, to track a person who has been making obscene calls, to find out more about a business contact before getting into a huge deal with him and other such reasons.
There are ways you can gain access to these records:

You can start with searching in the federal agency and the local government agency, such as the churches, schools, courts, trade associations etc. This is a time consuming task and entails you going around various offices. You may get some records for free but you may also have to pay for extra detailed information.
Another option you have is to hire a middleman or a detective agency to do the work for you and although you may get perfect results, you will have to shell out big money and it does take time.
The final and the best alternative is to look for the public records online. This is the fastest and cheapest solution. The online databases contain huge amounts of data and any information on a person alive or dead can be found. Some free websites offer limited information but there are several good websites that charge a minimum fee to give access to huge amounts of information.