ROCK ISLAND, Illinois--- A team of eight people from US Imaging partnered with Fidlar technologies to start the process of digitizing records from the Rock Island County Recorder’s Office Wednesday September 12.
“It’s still kind of seems like a dream a little bit. That’s the goal of any county recorder, to get those records digitized,” says Rock Island County Recorder, Kelly Fisher.
The team will work around the clock for two weeks to digitize more than 100 years of records. The $1.3 million project is a solution the county agreed to help finance in order to move the recorder’s office out of the old courthouse.
Fisher says digitizing the books will allow her office to move into the administrative building across the street. The books will be placed in the building’s attic.
“The attic, I saw it a couple of weeks ago and it's in really good shape, but we did have a structural engineer go in there and they did some drilling in there to make sure it could hold the books," Fisher says.
Once the records are digitized, Fisher says she plans to charge clients a few cents a page to gain access, bringing extra revenue to the county.
Fisher says she’ll get a rough copy of the documents next month. The company will then enhance those images to make them easier to read.
The entire process will take about six months.
Fisher says she expects to move out of the old courthouse sometime in November.
