Mormon site 'like gold'

''Where are you going? Where have you been?'' That's the title of a provocative short story by Joyce Carol Oates, and it came to mind recently when I stumbled across two fascinating Web sites.

''Where we've been'' is the focus of FamilySearch, a long-awaited site for genealogists published by the Mormons.

In CD format, it boasts over 200 million names and is spread over 48 disks.

Formerly, one gained access to this massive compilation of church, birth, death, wills, deed, personal and census records by visiting a local Family History Center or the downtown branch of the Hamilton County library. Now it appears online.

Genealogist Danny Miller, an English professor at Northern Kentucky University, contends that, for genealogists, having this information online is ''like discovering gold on your property.''

It represents the largest single collection of ancestral data on the globe.

Still, a few caveats are in order: For one, the Web site is yet not complete.

For another, FamilySearch focuses on families from Europe and the Americas, not Asia or Africa.

And in order to protect privacy, the site does not provide information on living people.

As for data on the recently deceased, your best bet is to visit SSDI, the Social Security Death Index site.

A second site worth looking at may help illuminate where you are going - or more precisely where your Internet relationships may be going.

Online relationships start as a personal correspondence or with an online dating service, but often lead to face-to-face encounters. That possibility may lead to questions.

Is he really a banker or merely a bankrupt?

Did he call himself a doctor or a docker?

And why will he only give you his pager number? If suspicions nag, consider contacting whoishe.com or whoisshe.com.

Linda Alexander is a lawyer in Vista, Calif., and for a moderate fee of $75, she will run a background check on

individuals.

You can learn of bankruptcies, tax liens, corporate affiliations, members of the household, and real estate holdings.

According to Ms. Alexander, ''Roughly 60 percent of the people I check are deceiving others, usually about their age or marital status.''

Where to find records online

The Mormon Genealogy Index is at: http://www.familysearch.com

The Social Security Death Index is at: http://www.ancestry.com/ssdi/advanced.htm

To arrange for a background check: http://www.whoishe.com and http://www.whoisshe.com

Stan Sulkes teaches at the University of Cincinnati's Raymond Walters College. Doing something interesting with Internet? Drop him a note at stan.sulkes@uc.edu