[vtdatawonk]

Recently we've been discussing how to get e-mail addresses for our alumni. For recent years, we have addresses for more than 85% of them. But starting at 10 years ago and older, the data are much more spotty.

We've heard about a "viral" scheme for getting these whereby you ask those for whom you *do* have addresses to help fill in the missing addresses - presumably of people with whom they're still in contact. And then you iterate that process until you have all the addresses or stop getting answers.

Has anyone done this? Does anyone know of tools to help do it. The database pulls to do it are straightforward, and the code needed to make it easy for people (integrating e-mail, web data acquisition, and database updates) don't sound tremendously complicated, but there's no point reinventing the wheel.

Thanks for your thoughts.
Jordan