Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Records Preservation topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
County clerk shows restored records; Brown County to fund book restoration and consider digitization project
Summary
Brown County Clerk Sharon Ferguson showed commissioners restored historic record books and reported paying $33,673 to preserve 13 deteriorating volumes from the county clerk records preservation fund; she also described a larger digitization project estimated at $150,775 to process indexed images through recent years.
Brown County Clerk Sharon Ferguson presented samples of restored record volumes and described recent and planned preservation work paid from the countyrecords management and archives fund.
Ferguson told commissioners she had 13 old books restored at a cost of $33,673; that invoice was approved by commissioners in November and paid in March from the county clerkrecords management fund. She showed before-and-after photographs of the volumes and said the work included cleaning, acidification/encapsulation and rebinding to preserve land and jury records dating to the late 19th century. Ferguson said those county clerk preservation funds are restricted for records preservation and that the restoration work helps protect Brown Countyhistorical records.
Ferguson also described a planned digitization project to convert additional records and images into digital format. In the meeting she stated the projected cost for a follow-on digitization phase was $150,775 and that the work would cover image processing for an identified set of years (the presenter said the county already has digital records after a certain cutoff year and this project would cover the intervening years). She said digitized records would be made accessible via the countycomputer systems and on flash drives as part of improving public access.
Commissioners received the presentation as information; no new appropriation or new contract was approved on the floor at this meeting because the 13-book invoice had been approved earlier and paid. Ferguson asked commissioners to note how the records management fund can be used for preservation and to support continuing digitization efforts.
