Recorder highlights progress on e-recording, AI research assistant and historic indexing
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Summary
Douglas County Recorder described growth in electronic recording (about 70% of submissions), a document-research AI tool with growing usage, and a project to import 1853–1967 images and index historic records to improve public searchability and fraud awareness.
Shawnee Garen, Douglas County recorder, briefed commissioners on workload trends and technology projects on March 24. She said recordings dipped with the refi market and have rebounded; roughly 70% of submissions are now electronic through five approved e‑recording platforms. "We currently have 5 different erecording platforms that we partner with," Garen said, noting typical consumer fees do not flow to the county.
Garen described a document research assistant (an AI tool developed in partnership with Common Chain) that accepts plain-language queries and has about 441 unique users with more than 1,600 queries. "The idea behind this AI tool is the average person out there has no idea what a grantor or a grantee is," she said, and the tool provides plain-language explanations of land-record concepts.
Staff also described a historic-indexing project: roughly 15,000 documents from about 1960–1970 were indexed in 2025, and the county is preparing to ingest more than 100 years of digitized images (about 100,000 pages) to expand searchability for researchers. Garen said cloud backup and preservation, and digitized map-extraction, are part of the office's technology roadmap.
Why it matters: expanding e-recording and searchable historic records improves public access and can help detect property-fraud indicators earlier. County staff said the recorder’s technology fund (from a $5-per-$40 flat recording fee) is used to pay for these projects.
What’s next: commissioners asked clarifying questions about service fees, historic-map OCR accuracy and partnerships; no formal actions were taken.
