County to digitize 150 years of records; commission approves $212K cost

More than 150 years' worth of Cape Girardeau County deeds, and military records going back more than a century, will be digitized and microfilmed over the next few months as part of the county's document preservation efforts.

The county commissioners voted at their meeting Thursday to allocate $212,336 for the project which will involve digitization of approximately 330,000 pages of deeds and military service records.

In August the commissioners approved a similar project to scan and digitize the county's marriage records dating back to the early 1800s. The cost of that project is approximately $31,000, half of which is being funded through a records preservation grant from the Missouri Secretary of State's office.

Compared to the marriage records project, "this is much larger," according to Cape County Recorder of Deeds Drew Blattner.

Based on a proposal presented to the commissioners Thursday, the recorder's office will underwrite $112,336 of the cost to digitize the deeds and military records while the remaining $100,000 will come from the county's capital improvement fund. Half of the project's cost will be paid in the current fiscal year with the balance paid in 2020.

"It will take several months to complete the process," Blattner said and estimated that by the time the project is completed, 99% of the official documents in his office will be electronically preserved.

The deeds and deed of trust records that will be digitized span the years of 1805 to 1964, while the military service records are from the World War I years through about 1990.

"Over the years, there was microfilming done of some of those records, but it was kind of spotty," Blattner said. "Back in the 1960s and 70s the Genealogical Society of Utah microfilmed some of the earlier books, but they didn't do them all and the quality of the microfilming was not the best. They had a lot of hands over the documents and parts of them were obliterated so you can't really rely on them."

The recorder added that "it's important that we have a full set of all record types, through all the years, and that it's not hit and miss, leaving out a few years here and a few years there."

In addition to missing years, Blattner said some of the microfilm the county has in its possession is beginning to deteriorate.

"The older microfilm was made differently, and that film is deteriorating and breaking down," he said. "Some of it stored at the (Cape County) Archive Center actually has vinegar syndrome." Vinegar syndrome is a chemical reaction that occurs when microfilm and old movies age. As a result, Blattner said some of the aging microfilm will need to be destroyed because vinegar syndrome can spread to other film.

ArcaSearch Corp. of Cold Spring, Minnesota, which specializes in historic document preservation, will digitize the marriage records beginning this fall as well as the deeds and military records after that.

"So we're trying to get one good set of digitized files," Blatter said. "Then from the digital images ArcaSearch will create microfilm sets of the digitized records." One set, he said, will be stored in a microfilm vault at the Missouri State Archives. "We will have another set that we'll store in our archive center, and that way, in the event we lose all power in the building and we're not able to access the digital images or if the internet is down and we can't get to them because it's a cloud-based remote access system, we can just run over (to the archive center) and grab the microfilm so we can still access the records,"

Blatter said only a few other counties in Missouri have digitized all of their records. "We're behind some of those counties, but by completing this project, I think that will bring us to the forefront statewide," he said. "We're taking the initiative to be prepared. If there's a disaster we'll be assured that regardless of what happens to the originals, we will always have the digital images and microfilm backup so all of the county's records will be safe."