Developments in 2013


Licking County Records & Archives, at 39 S. Buena Vista St.
There were several very significant developments in the Records & Archives Department last year:

Imaging Technician Corinne Johnson and Senior Imaging Technician Angie Spray scanned a total of 305,427 Clerk of Courts and Probate images.  Angie, Corinne and Records Manager Katy Klettlinger have also been involved with the implementation of OnBase, which is an electronic document management system.  They consulted with the Juvenile and Probate Court Divisions to see how OnBase would be useful in those offices.  Angie and Corinne are now both certified OnBase System Administrators.  According to Angie, OnBase "will help departments locate and retrieve documents more easily.  It also has workflow capabilities that allow you to have a document--let’s say a purchase order--which needs to be seen by multiple people.  You can send that document to everyone that it needs to go to, and they can all do what they need to do, and OnBase will keep an audit trail to let you know who did what and when.  Plus at any point you can check to see where that document is in the process and who has it."  As Corinne says, "the end result will be easy and fast document retrieval, more efficient business processes, and better records management for Licking County, all of which will result in major time-saving for both customers and staff. The implementation process should begin in February of 2014 with the Probate Court."

A major development for researchers is our Online Records Catalog, which is now available at http://lcounty.pastperfect-online.com/39695cgi/mweb.exe?request=ks.  This catalog uses PastPerfect Software, and it makes it much easier for researchers to find out what we have, and how certain records can be useful.  The catalog lists items that are in the Records & Archives facility, as well as 19th and 20th Century Clerk of Courts materials that are located in the basement of the Domestic Relations Court building.  Most items in these locations are now described in the catalog, and Records & Archives staff and volunteers are currently adding information about the remaining materials.  You can search the catalog by using basic Keyword and Advanced Search options.

Another very rewarding undertaking last year was the Licking County Children's Home Oral History Project.  Commissioner Tim Bubb, Records Manager Katy Klettlinger and Reference Archivist Bill Markley interviewed 22 people who lived or worked at the Children's Home.  Recordings of these interviews provide valuable information about what the Home was like from the 1930's until it closed in 1975.  Most interviews can be heard online by going to our online catalog at the link above.  Some persons who were interviewed donated photographs and other materials related to the Home.  Bill Markley is writing a history of the Home which will eventually be accessible at the Records & Archives website.

Our volunteers and college student interns worked for 355 hours last year on a variety of projects.  Volunteer Bob Grove cataloged several items in our online catalog, digitized Jail Register volumes, prepared Probate records for digitization, and helped with other tasks such as moving boxes.  Denison University student Liz Eagle organized the Diagnostic Chest Chart Files from the former Tuberculosis Sanitorium.  These records are not public because of medical information, so she also created a database of the names of patients and other basic information from them, which is public.  While this is not a complete list of patients, it is a good place to start looking for a name.  To get information from this database, please call our Department at 740-670-5121.  Denison student Austin Poyar and volunteer Jo Helen De Pue also wrote several brief biographies of Licking County elected officials.  These biographies will eventually be compiled with those written by others into a single collection and made available to the public.




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