Are you a Gumshoe Librarian?
I missed this presentation at the SLA (Special Librarians)' conference last summer, and although I'd seen notices it'd been posted online, hadn't seen it until now. For a very nice overview of how to become a research guru, this can't be beat. It's by Gary Price of Resource Shelf and Genie Tyburski of Virtual Chase. Among the good links: State court dockets online from Virtual Chase. (Note, I've often found Virtual Chase's People Finder Guide very useful for finding new public records searches.)
For a crash course in doing research, this presentation could be used by journalists, journalism students, and news researchers.