Clark County looks to free up storage space, secure documents

Clark County

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Public records sit stacked among other various items across from sliding shelves packed full of other records inside the Court Storage Room in the basement of the Clark County Government Building in Jeffersonville on Thursday. Officials are working on a plan to improve storage and security for the legal documents. Staff photo by Christopher Fryer
Public records sit stacked among other various items across from sliding shelves packed full of other records inside the Court Storage Room in the basement of the Clark County Government Building in Jeffersonville on Thursday. Officials are working on a plan to improve storage and security for the legal documents. Staff photo by Christopher Fryer
Public records sit shelved inside a legal records storage room in the basement of the Clark County Government Building in Jeffersonville on Thursday. Officials are working on a plan to improve storage and security for the legal documents. Staff photo by Christopher Fryer
Public records sit on sliding shelves inside the Court Storage Room in the basement of the Clark County Government Building in Jeffersonville on Thursday. Officials are working on a plan to improve storage and security for the legal documents. Staff photo by Christopher Fryer

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July 27, 2012

Clark County looks to free up storage space, secure documents

Some software would also allow residents to view public documents

By MATT KOESTERS matt.koesters@newsandtribune.com The News and Tribune Fri Jul 27, 2012, 08:16 AM EDT

JEFFERSONVILLE — Boxes of old audio tapes, pallets of handwritten court logs and crates full of who-knows-what litter the floor of the records room at the Clark County Government Building. Across a narrow walkway, rows of sliding shelves are packed full of file folders and binders.

Officials are simply running out of space to store documents that they’re legally required to retain, in some cases permanently. At a meeting of the Clark County Public Records Commission on Thursday, officials heard from vendors as the commission explored ways to alleviate the space concerns.

“We started organizing this commission in 2009 and got some good participation, and then there was the fire at the [Jefferson County, Ind.] Courthouse,” Circuit Court Judge Dan Moore, commission chairman said. “And that really raised the level of alert here that Clark [County] needed to be doing something to preserve these records, because they go back decades and they’re all paper records back in this giant room here.”

The 2009 fire in Madison heavily damaged Jefferson County’s public records, for many of which there was no backup.

The commission — which includes Clerk of Courts Barbara Haas, Auditor Monty Snelling, County Commissioner John Perkins and County Councilman Brian Lenfert — heard presentations from InfoResources, Underground Vault & Storage, A+ Paper Shredding and Toshiba Business Systems. Toshiba Business Systems sells DocuWare, a content management system currently in use in Floyd County. DocuWare allows noncounty employees to search public records online.

“It’s good for the general public, too — not just the people who work in this building,” Haas said. “For the people outside this building who have a need to look at court records, or marriage license records or whatever, they’ll be able to do that from their home instead of driving to the courthouse and finding a place to park and coming in the building through security to get a copy of their marriage records.”

Because of the cost of scanning and archiving old documents, the county will consider several approaches. Older files may or may not be scanned into a digital storage system, depending on the cost.

“It seems to me that drawing a line in the sand is something that we’re going to have to do,” Moore said.

The commission did not take any action at the meeting, and hiring outside vendors to manage the county’s documents will require approval of the county commissioners and council. However, Haas said she’d like to see a plan implemented around the first of the year.