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Records/Archives in the News Part 01 01/23/00
Records/Archives in the News r000103a
There are 7 stories in this posting.
Houston Chronicle 01/03/00
Law requires signs alerting Texans of right to records
Huntsville Times (Alabama) 1/3/00
Taking time to preserve history
Orlando Sentinel 1/3/00
New public-records handbook places Florida at your fingertips
Denver Post 1/3/00
Arapahoe records going electronic
Billings Gazette 1/3/00
Time treasures: boxes hold the history of Missoula
San Jose Mercury News 1/3/00
Law attacks racism in deeds? fine print
Business Wire 1/3/00
VisiFLOW document imaging system builds strong case before U.S. district court
_______________________________________________________________
Houston Chronicle 01/03/00
Law requires signs alerting Texans of right to records
Associated Press
<SNIP>
FORT WORTH (AP) --Henceforth, if a city or county employee balks at providing
access to an official document, point to the sign.
Under a new state law, local government offices had until today to post signs
advising Texans of their right to obtain records about almost any government
issue or activity.
Not only are the signs intended to alert the public about their rights to
state and municipal government documents, but also the government staff whose
job it is to serve the public, said state Sen. Jeff Wentworth.
Wentworth, R-San Antonio, heads the legislative committee that spearheaded
changes in the public information law.
?We heard testimony from a public official in Tyler that a city employee not
only withheld information from the public, but wouldn?t give public records
to her,? Wentworth is quoted as saying in a story in Sunday editions of the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
?Then that employee said that if someone asked her for the information again,
she would burn it rather than hand it over. ... We wanted to make record
keepers aware that not only is that kind of behavior inappropriate, but
illegal,? he said.
Some officials are reluctant to disclose official government information,
said Alan Greenspan, a Dallas lawyer with several media clients.
?Some government officials perceive the relationship between themselves and
the media as adversarial,? he said. ?They feel if they turn things over they
will be subject to criticism.?
Nancy Monson, Texas Freedom of Information Foundation executive director,
notes that many government employees simply find it inconvenient to allow the
public access to the information to which it?s entitled.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Thousands of information requests are fielded by government officials every
year. The attorney general?s office issues opinions about whether records are
exempt from public view at the request of government bodies.
More than 1,300 requests for open records opinions were submitted to the
attorney general?s office between September 1998 and September 1999, said
Heather Browne, an attorney general?s office spokeswoman.
<SNIP>
________________________________________________________________
Huntsville Times (Alabama) 1/3/00
Taking time to preserve history
Missionaries help county organize old records
by Kay Campbell
<SNIP>
FAYETTEVILLE, Tenn. - Open one of the ancient leather and corduroy-bound
books from the back shelves of the Lincoln County Archives. Watch how little
wisps of history rise out of the vellum page from the loops and swirls of the
inked names in the book two feet tall and thick as the width of your hand.
A time capsule for the New Year? Lincoln County has had one for years in
these records.
Here is the record of the county?s census, starting in 1820 when only heads
of households were named, and the number of idiots, insane, blind, and deaf
were counted, along with slaves or free blacks. Here are the old land grants,
giving Revolutionary War veterans a piece of the newly acquired Territory
South of the River Ohio.
Here are the lawsuits after the War Between the States when county residents
tried to get the government to reimburse them for the livestock and crops
stolen or ruined during the Yankee occupation. Here are marriage
certificates, deeds and wills.
As one of the few counties to escape a fire or tornado in the courthouse,
Lincoln County records offer historians a wealth of the material of the past.
For some, it feels like a way to shake hands across the centuries.
??You can read about history, but then the documents go through your hands,??
exclaimed Richard Gailey, sitting beside the microfilm camera he was
operating at the archives last week. ??I?ve driven on John Sugg Road - well,
I?ve handled John Sugg?s papers! They?re real people, not just a name on a
sign. It?s neat to get dipped in, involved in the culture in this area.??
Gailey and his wife, Anne, have been working in the county archives for
nearly four months, volunteering their time and expenses as missionaries from
the family history ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints. They are the third Mormon missionary team to come here to help the
county order and preserve records of births, deaths, marriages, divorces,
court cases, deeds and wills stretching back to the early 1820s, about 10
years after the county?s incorporation.
??It?s unreal the work they?ve done,?? said Peggy Bevels, the county
commissioner who has overseen the resurrection of the county?s archives
during the last 13 years. ??It would have been very, very expensive to get
this done through the state or through contractors.??
She watched as Gailey centered a marriage certificate, made minute changes in
the exposure level based on the color of the paper, snapped a picture and
whipped the certificate over to film the back.
The microfilm camera is on loan from the LDS genealogical services. When the
film is processed in Salt Lake City, one roll will be sent back to the
county, one to the state, and one roll will be kept in the extensive
genealogical library operated by the church because of the denomination?s
interest in families and doctrine of baptism by proxy whereby a member can be
baptized on behalf of an ancestor.
??People who know what they?re doing make it look easy,?? Bevels said
admiringly as Gailey flipped the certificate onto a pile and slipped another
into place below the camera.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
??All the hard, hard work had been done by the time the missionaries came
in,?? Anne Gailey said as she carried the file to Richard for filming.
Frances West, officially the county archivist now, and formerly the county?s
genealogist, remembers the hard work. All of the records used to be stored in
the basement of the courthouse - irreplaceable wills and court papers piled
into boxes with more dispensable receipts or forms.
??We worked 10 years down there getting it together,?? West said last week,
remembering her work from the sunny den of her Fayetteville home. ??There
were papers piled in the floor and boxes spilled out everywhere.??
More than 1,000 pounds of useless records were destroyed as they sorted
through and organized the mountain of paper. Volunteers would finish a day?s
work covered from head to toe in fine, black coal dust, since the county?s
original court house was heated with coal.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Each page of every book and every file had to be wiped off. They used a
putty-like wallpaper cleaner for most of it.
Volunteers, like Jim Pitts and Shirley Cato of Tullahoma, came to help, too,
joining local volunteers from the Lincoln County Historical Society and the
Lincoln County Genealogical Society and other history buffs. As they got the
records in order, some of those volunteers had to go around the county to
retrieve some of the books and papers that had been taken from the room over
the years.
??People love that original copy,?? Bevels said, shaking her head as she
opened a book reduced to a pile of paper wrapped in a leather back. ??It
would cost $3,000 to rebind this one book. It?s very important not to let
them get torn up or mutilated.??
To protect the documents, West and Bevels run the archives like any rare book
room of a library. Housed since 1995 in the building with the county Health
Department on West Washington Street, the archives has a waiting room, a
sunny office room with a long table for researchers, and the darker storage
area where the books are protected from sunlight.
Researchers sign in during the opening hours of 9 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.
Thursdays, leave their own papers and purses in a locked drawer, and use the
pencils for the documents that West will retrieve for them. They can ask West
to copy documents for them, but they can?t do their own copying, a rule that
tries to protect the brittle bindings of the books.
The new computer scanner, which will have a remote wand attachment, should
help protect the books, too, Bevels hopes, and make it easier for researchers
to get the information they want without tearing up the books. The county was
able to buy the scanner, like the microfilm reader, because of grants that
Bevels identified and applied for.
That equipment, the organization of the records, and the building itself
moved the state to identify the archives here as one of the top three in the
state, and to send other county officials from across Tennessee here as they
begin to organize their own archives. Organization of an archives has only
been mandated in Tennessee since 1994, so many counties have ahead of them
the work that?s been done here.
??I?m proud of it for the county,?? Bevels said. ??And when the state
starting noticing, I was really proud of it. It?s good for the county?s
economy, too - people design their vacations around getting to a cemetery and
our archives. That?s where they visit instead of going to Disney World.??
Historical research is more fun than Disney World, anyway, West maintains.
??There?s so much excitement when people finally find a piece of
information,?? said West, who has traced her own family back to the early
1700s and discovered that she is a distant cousin of Sgt. Alvin C. York, the
World War I hero. ??I remember one lady saying, ?Oh, I?ve been looking for
this for years!? You get started, and you don?t want to quit.??
<SNIP>
________________________________________________________________
Orlando Sentinel 1/3/00
New public-records handbook places Florida at your fingertips
Associated Press
<SNIP>
JACKSONVILLE?Is the day-care center down the street licensed? Has a
prospective employee ever been arrested? How much money did a legislative
candidate receive from a local business leader? Is that old bridge safe to
drive over?
Answers to these questions and hundreds of others are as close as ?The
Florida Public Records Handbook,? written by Jacksonville writer Joe Adams
and published by The First Amendment Foundation in Tallahassee. The handbook,
published through a grant from the National Freedom of Information Coalition
and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, details everything you wanted
to know about public records in Florida but didn?t know whom to ask.
The 457-page loose-leaf book contains 170 useful public records, including
key documents which can also be found at city hall, the courthouse, state
agencies and on the Internet. Thousands of other records are also summarized.
?I?ve always looked at public records as our friends. This was a way to
introduce people to friends they haven?t met yet,? Adams said.
Records covered in the book include individual documents, such as deeds,
lawsuits, police reports; regulatory and disciplinary files on licensed
professionals; information on businesses and facilities; publications; and
Internet resources such as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement?s Sexual
Offender and Predator database; and the Florida Government Services Directory.
Each entry includes details about the record, why it is useful, where to get
it, its online availability, agency phone numbers, references to other
handbook entries with related information, and tips and traps.
An example of the ?tip and trap? in the section on divorce records reads,
?Divorce cases can get nasty. Keep in mind that everything said or alleged in
a divorce proceeding may be true.?
Adams said the book will be useful to reporters, political leaders and the
average Floridian.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
The book, designed as a companion to the ?Government-in-the-Sunshine Manual,?
includes an overview of the state?s Public Records Law, a listing of
exemptions from the law; and a list of ombudsmen for various agencies.
?Records will tell you a lot if you take the time to look at them,? said Mark
Middlebrook, one of the editors. ?No matter who you are or what your role in
life is, they are extremely valuable.?
<SNIP>
_______________________________________________________________
Denver Post 1/3/00
Arapahoe records going electronic
by Ginny McKibben
<SNIP>
ARAPAHOE COUNTY - Clothbound books in the basement of the county
administration building detail the very beginnings of a fledgling county
nearly a century ago.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Few people have ever seen, and even fewer have touched, the early volumes.
But under a project initiated by Clerk and Recorder Tracy Baker, the
information will soon be unearthed and easily accessed by the public on
computer. ?It?s very exciting. Those early documents, with the script and
often on clothlike paper, are gorgeous,? Baker said.
Baker said the county is spending about $500,000 to convert the original
records to computer disks. Records slated to be scanned and entered into
computers include the county commissioners? minutes, engineering, planning,
zoning, and building records, Baker said.
The public has never been able to paw over the minutes of the county
commissioner hearings. At present, county employees copy specific documents
for anyone asking to see them.
But it is a costly and time-consuming process, Baker said.
Once transferred to computers, the records can be perused at leisure by the
public. The process will reduce manpower costs of retrieving documents,
preserve the historic records and takes the first step in a complete
conversion to electronic records, Baker said.
?We will eventually be a completely paperless county,? Baker s
<SNIP>
________________________________________________________________
Billings Gazette 1/3/00
Time treasures: boxes hold the history of Missoula
Associated Press
<SNIP>
MISSOULA (AP) - As the world ushers in a new century with all its
technological promises, Missoula County is just catching up with events from
the turn of the 20th century - by hand.
With painstaking precision, deputy county clerks continue to index government
documents into enormous leather-bound books that were first cracked open more
than 100 years ago.
Their signatures and notations follow those who came before and left their
marks, first with flowery lettering scribed with ink-dipped pens, later with
fancy ballpoint pens, said Terri Casillas, deputy clerk for the clerk of
court.
Casillas is helping index coroner?s inquests from as early as 1870. (May 15,
1884: Bessie Bower died of ?excessive use of liquor and opium.? Aug. 9, 1888:
?Chinaman unknown was murdered by being knocked in the head by parties
unknown with rocks.? Nov. 13, 1917: Jacob Wise ?died from accidentally
drinking carbolic acid.?)
?What I think has changed the most is the handwriting,? she said. ?It used to
be beautiful, artistic script and now it?s what I?d call uninspiring.?
And then there are the changes in the ink. Marriage records of the late 1800s
are done in midnight black. A mouse-gray ink seems the preferred choice
during the early 1900s, until the roaring ?20s, when lavender and
teal-colored inks enliven the pages, now yellowed with age. Basic black again
dominates the pages toward the end of the century.
The past, it seems, is really not that far behind us, said Marcia Porter, the
county?s official keeper of the past and supervisor for Missoula County
Records Management Department.
Just days before Christmas, Porter opened a dusty box that was among a
cluster of boxes that had yet to be microfilmed or filed in the county?s
records center and archives.
What she found was a treasure: the original certificate of the town site of
Missoula (the certificate that officiates a town,) filed Feb. 14, 1879 - six
years after C.P. Higgins deeded the property to the county in 1873.
?Probably that certificate, no one?s seen in 100 years,? Porter said. ?I was
so excited. I showed it to the judges and the surveyors; when you find the
original signatures, that?s so exciting.?
About 1 percent to 3 percent of county documents have not yet been indexed.
And like the discovery of the Missoula?s original town site record, some are
found in their original storage box, undisturbed for 100 years or more.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
?These records are really the history of Missoula County and western
Montana,? Porter said. ?They tell the good, the bad and the ugly.?
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Porter discovered entries on men who divorced their wives in the early 1920s,
one on the grounds that his wife had the audacity to come into a bar and
fetch him home, another because his wife was sick and he and his son had to
make their own meals.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
?Missoula County is only 135 years old and most Montana counties have those
old records,? Porter said.
But many communities that do not have storage room or funding for archival
preservation have unloaded some original papers and records, and may need to
dump more.
?If we don?t preserve them and just start pitching them, it will all be
lost,? Porter said.
And the loss, said Kathryn Otto, state archivist at the Montana Historical
Society, would be devastating, because those records are essentially the
unique family trees of each communities.
And for people interested in their family history, marriage and
naturalization, records are invaluable, Porter said.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
When Porter inherited the records warehouse in 1985, she and her staff began
the only records management program in the state, Otto said. They do all of
their own microfilming to national archival standards, and record and store
all government records.
?In that respect, Missoula County is so far ahead of everybody else,? she
said. ?They look at the entire universe of (county) government records. That?
s very good for efficient government and cost savings; you know where
everything is and where to find it.?
Archivists around the country embrace the efficiency of new technologies such
as computer scanning of records, but it does have drawbacks, Otto said.
?There is potential disaster,? she said. ?Technology changes so rapidly. If
you buy a system to image records and then destroy the original records, and
that imaging machine is no longer made, you cannot migrate those records.
Porter said she has chosen to keep all records on microfilm. Her reasoning is
that microfilm, first used by Missoula County in the 1960s, is expected to
last at least a hundred years.
But microfilm and computers also mean the twilight of the age of lovely
penmanship and leather-bound books, she said.
?It?s definitely an end of an era,? Porter said. ?But I wouldn?t change it.
Technology is wonderful and for accessibility, you can?t beat computers.?
<SNIP>
________________________________________________________________
San Jose Mercury News 1/3/00
Law attacks racism in deeds? fine print
by Karen De Sa
<SNIP>
BLACK real estate brokers across the country are launching a campaign to
eliminate racist housing documents that once nurtured the growth of
exclusively white neighborhoods.
The grass-roots movement hopes to replicate nationwide a groundbreaking
California law taking effect today that allows discriminatory language to be
deleted from housing deeds.
The racial restrictions have been unenforceable for decades but continue to
exist in legal documents that must be passed on from seller to buyer. No one
knows exactly how many houses carry such deeds, but they are widespread and
often outrage home buyers who bother to read the fine print.
While some say the documents are meaningless remnants of the past that should
simply be ignored, the predominantly black National Association of Real
Estate Brokers sees them as a modern-day civil rights issue and is pushing
for national action.
``It goes to the heart of the problem we have in America,?? said Ernest
Clark, president of the brokers association. ``People think that
racism?because they don?t lynch people anymore?doesn?t hurt. It?s a
psychologically damaging affair when you look at what these documents say. If
it?s translated literally, there?s nothing that tells you its unenforceable;
you have to do some research to find out this is not a valid thing.??
Subdivisions throughout California and the country in the 1930s, ?40s and
?50s were constructed with a careful social agenda folded into their
architectural plans. Restrictive clauses in housing deeds were common,
stating explicitly that ``Caucasian-only?? neighborhoods would allow
minorities only as servants.
A 1948 Supreme Court decision and subsequent state statutes made exclusion
illegal. However, documents targeting people of African, Asian, Jewish and
``Mongolian?? descent continue to be reproduced and distributed, typically
with little concern.
Pleasant Hill attorney Beth Grimm, who represents hundreds of California
homeowner associations, said she sympathizes with those who are offended by
racist deeds, but doesn?t think much needs to be done about them.
``Anybody that read those things today would know they?re not important?it?s
absurd to take it personally,?? she said. ``It?s part of past history.??
Black brokers who are in heated discussion with religious leaders and
politicians at the state and federal level disagree.
``When we look at a state that is becoming more and more diverse, with some
communities that are already majority people of color, you?re leaving things
in place that are going to create tension,?? said Ray Carlisle, who heads the
real estate brokers? national investment division. ``It reinforces old fears
and inferiority complexes that say you?re not good enough to live in a white
neighborhood.??
The brokers want national legislation or a Department of Housing and Urban
Development-sponsored effort to sweep the tattered documents permanently from
county archives.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Last year, HUD officials investigated complaints about Bay Area restrictive
deeds and found that they may be more than just subtle reminders of a Jim
Crow past.
``We found them everywhere, in every county we went to,?? said May Jaber, a
local HUD official. ``We were told by Realtors that some people use these to
keep people out?that it could be used even today to keep people out of
certain neighborhoods. If you were a moderate-income person it would keep you
away. It would scare you just by perception.??
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Thomas Raffetto read the fine print when he bought a home in Redwood City in
1994. His deed states: ``No person or persons other than of Caucasian race
shall be permitted to occupy the said land or building or residence.??
``I was caught by a date of 1938 -- that alone interested me,?? Raffetto
said. ``My guess is that people aren?t reading these things, because if they
were reading them, people of these races would be reacting to them.??
Under California?s law, written by state Sen. John Burton, D-San Francisco,
and Assemblyman Rod Pacheco, R-Riverside, county clerk recorders will attach
a disclaimer in bold red letters on every housing deed they copy and
distribute beginning today. The disclaimer warns that any discriminatory
restriction is void. In addition, individual homeowners can cross out racist
clauses and resubmit their deeds to county clerks. Tens of thousands of
California homeowners associations will be required to do this by Jan. 1,
2001.
The effort has not received universal support, with a range of agencies from
title companies to clerk recorders arguing that time and cost to alter the
documents will be a wasted effort.
``It?s something we would all rather quite frankly not have to deal with or
draw attention to because it makes the consumer uncomfortable,?? said Craig
Page, vice president and legislative counsel for the California Land Title
Association. ``Whenever possible, you want to treat these things as if they
don?t exist.??
Brenda Davis, Santa Clara County?s clerk-recorder and president of the
California State Recorders Association, said concerns arose before the law
was passed that the clerk?s fundamental duty as archivist and protector of
historical documents would be compromised by having to alter housing deeds.
And historians have similar concerns.
Al Camarillo, a Stanford University history professor, relies on racial deeds
to conduct research on the evolution of barrios and ghettos in California.
Camarillo said he doesn?t support wiping these documents from the past.
``I can see how it?s offensive, but the historian in me knows that these are
really important to show how residential areas became racially exclusive and
to be able to tell how communities formed,?? Camarillo said.
But the real estate brokers say they are tired of being reminded of past
indignities.
<SNIP>
________________________________________________________________
Business Wire 1/3/00
VisiFLOW document imaging system builds strong case before U.S. district court
<SNIP>
CULVER CITY, Calif. (BUSINESS WIRE) - The United States District Court for
the District of Nevada has implemented the VisiFLOW document imaging system
from Datamax Technologies Inc. that enables it to access documents from
anywhere, at any time, with little or no delay in processing the request.
According to David Settles, the court?s project coordinator, the United
States District Court for the District of Nevada, which sits in both Las
Vegas and Reno, will soon be able to share case files while significantly
reducing the handling costs. With judges located in Reno handling
approximately 30% of the Las Vegas case filings, the court is constantly
burdened with the cost of shipping documents. They also face the problem of
having additional documents filed in Las Vegas while the actual case file is
in Reno.
?We had developed our own case management system, Nevada Electronic Docketing
(NED), and we wanted the ability to integrate it with the VisiFLOW system,?
Settles explained. ?We will soon create a system whereby court personnel can
find the case file to be reviewed and view the actual documents within that
file without launching an additional application.? With the integration of
VisiFLOW and NED, nothing more than a mouse click will be needed to bring the
requested document to the user?s desktop. As a result, the court will
significantly reduce the time spent searching for the document in the file
room or locating the document if it has been checked out for review or
processing. In addition, the new imaging system will allow the Court to
deploy an Internet interface to the case files within the system.
According to Bix Kroener, Datamax Technologies general manager, the court
assessed numerous factors when reviewing competing vendors? products. These
included end user interface, ability to program future applications, overall
product cost, operating system and database program, ease of use and
installation, company reputation and client references, and its ability to
integrate with NED.
?We are very pleased that we were selected by the U.S. District Court as
their document imaging system of choice,? Kroener said. ?It is another strong
indicator of our commitment to the public sector and we will continue to
deliver business process automation solutions that improve productivity,
increase customer service and streamline communications.? Settles also
reported that initial system implementation and training was completed in
less than one week. The system configuration includes Microsoft NT and SQL
Servers running on a Compaq Proliant 5500. In addition, since the initial
installation, the Court has developed two additional applications and
numerous plans for further applications. In the future, the Court plans to
incorporate many enhancements to meet their increasing requirements for data
access and the need to timely file legal documents, Settles noted. Some of
those include electronic filing of court documents over the Internet and
automatic e-mail or faxing of documents to parties. These enhancements would
allow attorneys and all other interested parties ready access to case files.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Datamax Technologies? VisiFLOW Business Process Automation System features
integrated workflow, electronic document management, COLD, CTI integration,
forms recognition, and Web based workflow for automating business processes
to maximize savings per transaction. Further information on Datamax
Technologies can be obtained by phone at 310/645-4199, fax 310/645-4197,
email info@dtmx.com or on the Web at www.dtmx.com.
With headquarters in Culver City, Datamax Technologies Inc. is a privately
held provider of workflow, electronic document management (EDM), COLD and
forms recognition software, as well as enterprise wide call center solutions.
Founded in 1993, the company has evolved into a national leader in
transaction-based, high volume production systems. Major clients include
Lockheed Martin, the Federal Aviation Administration, Clorox, Houston Police
Department and Scottsdale Insurance, among others.
<SNIP>
PETER A.KURILECZ CRM, CA
PAKURILECZ@AOL.COM
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