A computerized system for augmenting data from a source database with data from a reference database to generate an augmented database that can be used for predictive modeling is disclosed. The present invention includes a method for using the Internet to obtain information, including, reading a data record stored in a field of data, searching a database for information describing the data record, condensing the information describing the data record into a value description, associating the value description with the data record, and augmenting the field of data with the value description associated with the data. The present invention also includes a computerized system for augmenting data from a source database with data from a reference database to generate an augmented database that can be used for predictive modeling and data mining to conduct searches of data in the augmented database.