Genealogy Online: Later this year you will be able to research your ancestry online. The Clerk & Recorder’s Office is bringing all genealogical records to life in the digital realm. This service will allow visitors to search County records dating back to 1837. Visitors will be able to search the genealogical records for free, or pay a small fee to own the original document. We’ll have more on the launch of this program, and I invite you to check it out and let me know your thoughts.
Online Land Records: One of the most frequent concerns I heard over the past several years is the desire to have land records accessible online. Earlier this year many within the community participated in a survey to help the Recorder’s office ascertain what the end user would prefer when conducting searches. It has been a few months since we’ve had an opportunity to update the many users who are interested in this feature and I wanted to let you know, I haven’t forgotten, and we are working hard to make this a reality.
Before providing an update, I want to express my compliments to our hard working Information Technology staff at the County. They have done a tremendous job in working with the Recorder’s office to develop our first step into making online records a reality. Keeping this project internal has saved taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, and their work is world class.
The first step in making this a reality was to transition the millions of records stored in our previous DOS based program into a usable, more stable database environment. In early February the data conversion was successful, and work began on integrating this data into a new platform in the Windows environment.
In last month’s newsletter I introduced you to C.A.R.L. – the Clerk And Recorder Land record search system. We have been conducting in depth testing of the new program to ensure that everything is operational and functional before releasing it for live testing with our regular users. Before the release for the live testing, we will invite community members to an update meeting and to formally introduce you to C.A.R.L.
So far the testing has yielded great results and sets the benchmark for the future. The CARL program integrates the data from our CROS system and OnBase so you can find all the documents in one easy to use program. It also allows users who may not be familiar with our process to quickly learn and search for items they require.
It is important to note this is the benchmark to bring the data online. The redaction – or removal of sensitive information from the documents – is a vast undertaking as well and takes at a minimum 145 days to complete. We are in the initial stages of the redaction process and hope to complete the necessary changes in late January, 2012. The current plan is to assess our progress in early January and begin setting a timeline to bring the data online within the second quarter in 2012. I truly appreciate the input and patience of the many stakeholders in the process. It is important to note that we must do this right the first time around to build a world class system that works for all our needs.
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