Bartholomew County will begin the process of converting millions of pages of public records dating back to the 19th century into a digital format early next year.
“We are estimating about 2.4 million pages of records will be contained in our system,” Scott Mayes, the county’s information technology director, told Bartholomew County commissioners this week.
“That’s just a small portion of its capacity,” commissioners chairman Larry Kleinhenz said of the electronic storage system. “We can also use it for other projects.”
Searches for vital, historic and other publicly registered documents are popular online activities. Records being sought range from birth certificates, marriage licenses and divorce records to census data, public meeting minutes and land-use documents.
An initial investment of $37,915 was approved by the commissioners for the project, which includes licensing fees, installing indexing capabilities and setting up virtual file cabinets, Mayes said.
In addition, the county will pay an annual maintenance fee of $3,527 for hardware and software, he said.
For more on this story, see Saturday’s Republic.
