The Kentucky Department of Library and Archives (KDLA) Local Records Program distributes grant funds to local government agencies to assist them with records management, which includes digitization, security microfilming, supplies/equipment, salary support and records conservation. Funds are awarded twice annually, and any local government agency is eligible to apply.
The second cycle for FY 2022 grants is active, and applications will be accepted through Sept. 3 with awards announced in December.
Crittenden County Clerk Daryl Tabor sees the benefit of using these grant funds to help his county.
“Having been appointed to office less than a year ago, this has been an exciting achievement for our office and the community,” Tabor said. “It continues a push by former County Clerk Carolyn Byford to digitize the county’s most used and most important public documents.
“Small counties with a modest economy like ours could never afford to make this much progress toward preservation and moving everything online without help through grants like the Local Records Program,” Tabor added. “We are very grateful to have been awarded this help.”
The Crittenden County Clerk’s Office’s share of the grant was just shy of $30,000, but Tabor’s office made sure that money went a long way. He said work began earlier this week and will assist with digitizing, microfilming and the purchase of storage boxes.
“The microfilming will provide backup for 27 of our more recent deed books and three of the same for marriage books,” Tabor said. “This will provide KDLA their preservation copies.
“The storage boxes will allow us to better house some of the county’s oldest, most fragile records stored loosely in cabinets for decades and ensure a safer relocation of those delicate documents when we move to new county offices sometime next year,” he added.
Data Records Management Services (DRMS) Services of Paducah and DocScan of Western Kentucky (in Christian County) serve as vendors for the Crittenden County Clerk’s Office project.
“Digitizing is the bulk of the work and most important for preservation and access for the public,” Tabor said. “It includes 36 deed books that will make our digitized deeds accessible in the office and online back to 1920. It also will see 70 books of marriage records scanned and indexed back to the county’s beginning in 1842. That will make all marriage records available in digital format.
“Though not a part of this grant, our office has spent $5,000 more digitizing mortgage books,” Tabor added. “We also have contracted to, for the first time, digitize fiscal court records in OCR (optical character recognition) back to 1998. This $5,000 project will make meeting minutes, resolutions and ordinance searchable by keywords.”
Other examples of local records program projects from other county offices include equipment purchases, salary allocations and codification.
For more information about KDLA’s Local Records Program, contact Nicole Bryan at 502-564-1745 or by email at nicole.bryan@ky.gov. Learn more about the program here.
