The Why and How of Digitization of Historical Land Records

County clerks, registers of deeds, recorders, and assessors all have responsibility for preserving historical land records. Access to these records often means entering a dusty records vault, looking for and finally finding a heavy deed book. The book weighs as much as a small child and has pages that were damaged by a herd of landmen from two states over. Making a copy means you’ll be using a copier with glass like a frat house shower door. To make matters worse, court is in session today and you had to park at the diner across from the courthouse and the rain is coming. 

Maybe you have a lot of microfilm. The game this time is “scroll and hunt.” Your eyes start to feel the strain quickly, as you scan page after page. That is if that ancient piece of equipment is still working and if you have the right roll. 

The bottom line is, even if your vault is airy, cheery, and bright, you find the right old book, and your microfilm reader is still working, county clerks, assessors, recorders, registers of deeds, and the public need access to historical land records.

Paper is fragile and takes up a lot of space. Microfilm is antiquated and inconvenient. When it comes to preserving historical land records, the only path is digital. You not only get easy access to records, but you achieve true long-term preservation that paper and microfilm just don’t offer. You get to make your local newspaper and constituents happy to boot. 

As you know, long-term preservation of land records is a necessity, because, without reliable land records, property ownership can’t be proven, lien rights can’t be protected, and property boundaries can’t be established, disputed, or enforced. However, physical records can be damaged at any time, from fire or natural disasters. Digitization of these important documents achieves the goals of perpetual preservation along with easy access and shareability. But digitization does more than that. Read on.

Save Your Budget and Make Title Researchers Happy 

Your digitization effort can and will save money. One obvious area of savings is the time it takes your staff or researchers to locate, sort, scan or copy, export, and then re-file the document. With digitized historical land records, they are clearly indexed and easy to find with just a few mouse clicks. 

You’ll also be able to remove the budget line item for new binders and paper, as well as the cost of any additional outside storage you’re paying for. Digitization also offers the following benefits:

• Reduces expenses for mailing, copying, shipping, and storing hard copy documents.

• Once digital and in your system of record, your land records generate revenue without any additional labor.

• Eliminates the need for paper file storage on-site, which frees up that space so it can be used in more productive ways. While your record room isn’t going to magically disappear, you won’t be on the hook for purchasing new book storage racks.

• Digital files are easy to store, access, and retrieve, and are far more secure than paper storage, which risks not only being damaged but misplaced or stolen. The electronically stored information can be protected with access restrictions, permissions profiles, and passwords.

• Efficiency is improved by a consistent format. Since your county was formed, the way land documents were recorded has changed many times. When indexing your land records, you can make the format consistent across the board.

• Your records are safe from any disaster, natural or otherwise. If an employee or researcher destroys or misplaces a record so it cannot be found, a costly and complex court action could be on your docket.

• Save money on paper, printers, ink, and maintenance costs.

Digitization reduces record retrieval time, eliminates storage and other hard costs, and employees can use their time for more important matters. 

More Benefits of Digitization

Saving money while preserving historical documents for posterity? That’s a fantastic benefit of digital collections, but there are many other advantages to your digital transformation. These include:

• Rapid access. Not just for yourself and your staff, but for anyone who needs your documents. This goes a long way with title attorneys, abstractors, genealogists, and landmen that need access.

• Backup and disaster recovery. Your paper documents are one-of-a-kind. A busted pipe or bad storm can erase the history sitting in your vault.

• Multiple user access. When more than one person needs a record at the same time, it’s no problem. No more attorneys or abstractors jockeying for position to get the information they need. With digital collections, unlimited authorized users can get what they need at the same time.

• Digitized documents are sustainable. Cutting down on paper waste is everyone’s job. In fact, the federal government has mandated that federal agencies must make business processes and record-keeping fully electronic by the end of 2022.

• Document restoration. Digital document restoration allows your records to be viewed with their original quality without any further compromise to the condition of the physical material.

• Image enhancement. Your paper documents might look fuzzy due to age. Or, they might be low contrast or have unreadable portions. Image enhancement can help make your records more readable in digital form than they were on paper.

• Voters care. Your constituents want to know that money is being spent on modernizing their local government offices for the future. When election time nears, you can yell from the rooftops that your land records are preserved for eternity.

We recently completed a multi-year project for Pike County, MS, scanning 40 years worth of county land records.

“We were extremely happy with the quality and service of Revolution Data Systems throughout our scanning project. This was a multi-year engagement with a lot of moving parts.”

— Becky Buie, Pike County Chancery Clerk

Now that you know why digitization is the way to go, let’s talk about how it’s done. We’ll break it down into two components: what you need to do to prepare, and our process for successfully preserving your collection of land records. 

Digitizing Historical Land Records: Your Part of the Process

You might have single documents, bound documents, microfiche, microfilm, or aperture cards. As part of sustainability and cost-saving initiative, you’re charged with converting and preserving historical land records electronically. You also might have some electronic records and images. 

It can be a difficult project to wrangle. Not only do you have to make sure all paper documents are preserved, but those also have to be integrated with any electronic images and data. We’ve led hundreds of projects like yours, which is why we’ve created a list of preparation steps to help you get ready.

From a very high level, we need to know how many books you have and how your instruments need to be indexed. Below is a detailed overview of what needs to take place on your end.

We are here to guide you every step of the way.

Task 1 – Inventory

Your inventory will get you organized and help RDS get a holistic view of your project. The inventory will help us calculate not only pricing but needed resources that enable us to give you a turnaround time. We’ll also be able to anticipate any problems going in, so the process goes as smoothly as possible. Our digitization experts can visit your office and walk through a thorough survey with you. 

You’ll want to start by sorting your historical land records by format and media types:

• Maps and drawings

• Bound and mechanical books

• Documents that are oversized, including bound and unbound books

• Microfiche – 16 or 35mm jacket fiche, COM fiche, step-and-repeat fiche

• Microfilm – 16mm or 35mm, blips or no blips

• Aperture cards – single or multiple images per card

• Digital media like USB, CD or DVD

• Any other types of material

Next, you’ll want to take each of these different media types and sort them by document type:

• Deeds/Conveyances

• Deeds of Trust/Mortgages

• Grantor/grantee/sectional indices

• Plats and maps

Now that sorting is over, it’s time to estimate the volume of items you need scanned. You can count books, boxes of paper, and the number of rolls of microfilm. Microfiche sheets and aperture cards are more difficult to estimate, so here are some tips.

Task 2 – Calculate Your Volume

Estimate your land record totals by book:

• Start by identifying the bound books versus mechanical books. Bound books require more labor and therefore cost more.

• Get an average page count for both book types and multiply it by the number of books.

• The average volume can change as you move across the collection, so try to estimate on the high side if there is a big variation.

• This should give you a pretty accurate page count estimation for both bound and mechanical books.

You can estimate microfiche by measuring it:

• Stack your microfiche together and measure one inch.

• Pull out the stack of microfiche that you just measured.

• Count precisely how many fiche are in an inch.

• Measure the linear inches of your complete collection of microfiche.

• Multiply the number of inches by the number of microfiche per inch.

A less precise method can be used: If you want to skip counting how many fiche are in an inch, a general rule of thumb is 90-110 fiche per inch.

You can estimate microfiche by drawer and cabinet:

• Horizontal cabinets (drawers that are 36” wide x 24” deep) hold 17,800 microfiche per drawer. These come in 5, 7, or 10-drawer sizes.

• Vertical cabinets (drawers that are 21” wide x 29” deep) hold 12,870 microfiche per drawer.

For example, with two full five-drawer horizontal style cabinets, that’s 178,000 microfiche sheets. 

Estimating Aperture Cards

Estimate aperture cards by the measurement method:

See the microfiche measuring instructions above. Without envelopes or separators, there are about 100-120 cards per inch.

Estimate aperture cards by drawer and cabinet:

You’re going to use the same method here as for microfiche. Aperture card storage cabinet examples include:

• Horizontal cabinets (drawers that are 43” wide x 18” deep) hold 8,250 aperture cards per drawer.

• Vertical style cabinets (drawers that are 25” wide x 29” deep) hold 8,050 aperture cards per drawer.

Task 3 - Budgeting for your land record digitization project

How you budget for the project is completely dependent on your office. We have seen clerks and recorders get very creative with funding projects through archive funds, federal grants, fee collections, and others. Many states have an archive fund that sets aside a percentage of recording fees to be used for archival projects. Some use fees generated by their offices at their discretion or with board approval. Recently we have worked with offices that have been utilizing ARPA funds to cover digitization projects. 

You may not be able to budget for the entire project in one fell swoop, most can’t. We can work with you to break the project into manageable pieces over time. We typically start with the newest book and work our way back until we reach book 1. 

However you choose to fund your land record project, we are here to assist you. 

Digitizing Historical Land Records: Our Part of the Process

This is the tried and true process that we have used for hundreds of counties across the US. We will gladly assist you with every step listed above to gather requirements and deliver an accurate proposal for your scanning project. 

Once the proposal is signed, we get to work. 

1. The first thing we do is decide where to scan your documents. We provide onsite scanning and offsite scanning of land records. If you opt for off-site scanning, we transport the books to our secure service bureau for scanning. For onsite projects, we bring equipment and operators to your record room for the scanning process. It is completely up to you, but most choose offsite to reduce costs. Our document request system gives you full visibility into your land records collection without slowing down operations for researchers.

2. Once we have equipment setup or your documents in-house, we prep your documents for scanning. This includes all of the steps necessary to ready your documents for conversion to digital like taking mechanical books apart, checking that no pages are out of order, repairing any pages that have been damaged, and moving any attachments to white space or separate pages.

3. Then we digitally scan your land records. We use the latest technology to capture only the highest quality digital images. Our document capture software flags any document that doesn’t meet our quality requirements and submits it for rescanning. Our quality control team views each scanned image on large, high-definition monitors to make sure 100 percent of the pages are scanned correctly.

4. After scanning, every image goes through both automated and manual image enhancement steps to provide the best legibility and resolution possible. We deploy image enhancement software and techniques that significantly improve image quality after document scanning. This stage is critical when dealing with historical records, especially photostats, handwritten documents, seals, and signatures. Our software developers have fine-tuned our proprietary software over multiple decades and tens of millions of scanned images.

5. Once the images are scanned and enhanced, we start the land record indexing process. Indexing is how your digital files will be named and organized in your system. Your digital documents are indexed based on your specifications, but we can help you decide the best way to go about it. This involves consulting your deputies that work with the documents every day. If you have standard indexing rules in place, great! If not, we go through a formal rule-building exercise with your team to ensure we are indexing the right fields in the proper format.

   We start by grouping the land records into individual documents. They can be fully indexed by document number, book and page numbers, legal descriptions, grantor/grantee, section, township, range, or any other way you require. We typically mimic the way you are indexing land instruments today as they are filed. In some instances, we will reduce the number of fields indexed based on your needs. For records older than 40 years, we can simplify the index fields down to the book number, page number, and document number to reduce costs. These typically aren’t accessed very often and simple indexing will do. It’s important to note that complicated land record indexing will be costly, so think about what you need rather than what you want.

6. We work with your software provider to make sure our data output is formatted for intake into your system. We have worked with every major land records software provider in the US and are intimately aware of how to format your data. Lastly, we send the final deliverable for import to your system, and voilà–your land records are digital.

You can now start using your digitized documents, and share them with others quickly and easily. 

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Let’s look at a project that illustrates the process. For Madison Parish, LA, we converted decades of paper documents into easily accessible, permanent digital records. For each stage of the project:

• The RDS onsite scanning team set up scanners and technicians at the courthouse to scan the land record books.

• Quality control was performed by our post-production team to ensure the images were of high quality.

• Next, land records were fully indexed by our data entry team. Full indexing means that we manually typed all index fields from the scanned images (Party Names, Recording Date, Document Type, partial or full Legal Description).

• Once indexing was completed, we submitted an exception report to flag any illegible fields or missing data. These exceptions were corrected before data was entered into the system.

• Sensitive information like social security and driver's license numbers were redacted from the images so that they could be safely accessed online.

• A dedicated project manager worked directly with Madison Parish’s software vendor to format and upload the scanned images and associated metadata.

To date, we have scanned and indexed conveyance records back to 1962 and mortgage records back to 1982. This range covers a great deal of the records that are frequently accessed by attorneys and abstractors to perform title research. The parish also engaged us to scan and index their marriage records per their specifications. 

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Digitization Offers Piece of Mind

You never know what tricks mother nature has up her sleeve or what life will throw at you, and as our client in Sunflower County, MS, said, “There is no substitute for preparedness when it comes to permanent records.” 

Paper is not permanent, which can be damaged by fire and water or scooped up and blown away by a tornado. Digitized documents are essential for a truly permanent record.

“As Chancery Clerk, I wanted to ensure that county records are preserved accurately. After taking office in 2016, the process of records preservation had begun. This was a task that I wanted to continue.

Teaming up with Revolution Data Systems has been both rewarding and refreshing. I feel confident knowing that our county records are available and preserved.”

— Dr. Gloria McIntosh, Sunflower County Chancery Clerk

To date, we have digitized nearly fifty years of historical land records for Sunflower County. These records are now protected for eternity in a digital format. Over the course of the next few years, we will continue to scan and index land records until the project is completed giving the county full access to its entire collection in one place.

Today’s a Great Day to Start Digitizing Your Historical Land Records

Revolution Data Systems is here to help. We know digitizing and preserving your historical land records is complex, not to mention deciding how the records will be indexed and stored, and how to best secure access. 

We also know that it’s all but impossible for your staff to scan all of your valuable documents, which is why we offer our scanning services at your location or ours. 

We’ll guide you every step of the way from beginning to end and make sure your project is successfully executed efficiently and with minimum disruption. We’re the government document specialists. Give us a call at (985) 888-0091, email us at info@revolutiondatasystems.com or fill out our contact form. We’ll discuss your project and provide a custom quote.