> The Troy City Clerk’s office has received $8,544 in funding through the New York State Archives and Records Administration (SARA) under the Local Records Management Improvement Fund (LGRMIF) for the purpose of digitizing over 100 years of marriage and City Council meeting records. > Digitizing records not only improves public access to those records; it also serves to maintain records that are in fragile condition and reduces space needed for physical storage. > Because the records will be searchable, public access will be simpler and faster. The work will be completed between now and next June by E-BizDocs of Menands. After documents and record books are scanned and information captured in a custom data base, the originals can be stored away safely. > “This grant-funded initiative is only the beginning of an ambitious program to migrate the City’s physical records into an electronic format” said Mayor Lou Rosamilia. “The conversion to electronic records is a growing trend across the country.” > “Smart software is used to process the scanned documents and the end result is a much more searchable data base for city employees and for the public,” said Karla Guererri, City Clerk. In fact, the grant proposal includes a computer terminal that can be used by the public at the Clerk’s window to search public records. > Lynn Kopka, City Council President stated, “ Our goal is fiscal responsibility, so the less space we require at City Hall, the better. Every square foot we don’t need for hard copy city records equates to saving.” “City Of Troy Wins Grant to Digitize Public Records.” October 9, 2013. http://www.troyny.gov/Newsroom/CityNews/13-10-09/City_Of_Troy_Wins_Grant_to_Digitize_Public_Records.aspx I received this info from the NYS Archives today: > The City completed it’s 2013-2014 LGRMIF grant to digitized certain records. Below is the final project report that they submitted: > > The City of Troy received funding from the NYS Archives Local Government Records Management Improvement Fund for a document conversions project of Marriage Records and City Council Minutes/Legislation located in the City Clerk's Office. The City Clerk's Office staff was faced with unwieldy procedures in locating and issuing copies of Marriage Records, City Council Minutes, and Council Legislation. Most of these records were not functionally indexed making it difficult to locate a specific record. Also, the Marriage Records are permanent historical records that are bound in large cumbersome books. Physical utilization of these books continually deteriorates the physical integrity of each book and the pages. Our goal was to convert these records to digital format with indexing so search and retrieval is far less time consuming for the City Clerk's Office Staff. Also, the paper records and older bound books would be utilized less resulting in substantially less wear and ! tear on their physical state. > > As a result of this conversion project, Marriage Records including 1915-1922, 1945-1957, 1963-1964, 1970-1971; City Council Minutes including 1971, 1984, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1997; and Council Legislation from 1999-2005 are now in digital format and indexed. The City Clerk's Office staff is now able to search and retrieve records and information from this group of records spending far less time than before. The Marriage Record books that were scanned will not be utilized as much which will reduce the physical deterioration and damage that occurs when they are continuously pulled and combed through. City Council Minutes and Legislation are far more user friendly to both staff and to the public. > > E-Biz Docs began the digital conversion of the records indicated above in March of 2014 and completed work on June 11, 2014. > > The final cost of the project came in $748.81 less than what was originally projected. This is because some volumes of Marriage Records that were included in the original plans of the project were in newly restored books. E-Biz Docs would have had to cut each page out of these books in order to scan. This was not suitable. > > This project moves us further into an electronic records environment. It is important for a better long-term storage media and retrieval system. The success of this project encourages support for other similar conversion projects. The City Clerk's office will continue to enter all new marriage records into software developed and dedicated to serve as an electronic repository of these records. New City Council Minutes that are generated will continue to be scanned, in-house to searchable pdf’s and made available to the staff and the public through the City web portal. There’s no mention in that report of the public computer terminal that was budgeted, so I don’t know if that was carried through or not, or why 100 years of Council Minutes weren’t scanned as planned. I hope there’s paper backups of new marriage records. Chris