LCRA in 2015 and Now

In 2015, the Department was especially productive in scanning, records disposal, cataloging, and preparing for our eventual move to 675 West Church Street.  With very generous help from Licking County Clerk of Courts Gary Walters and his staff, we have been going full steam ahead towards that future move.  Renovations will begin this year at the Church Street building.  After that project is complete, the building will enable us to consolidate several more county government collections at one location.

675 W. Church Street, where our department will
eventually move all of our operations.

Records & Archives Manager Sophia McGuire has also been working regularly with other county departments to determine future records storage needs, and assist with current records management issues.  She has presided at Record-Keeper Roundtable meetings, and she has been meeting individually with county records clerks throughout this year and last.

Imaging Technicians Corinne Johnson and Angie Spray scanned 420,391 images in 2015, which is a 21% increase over the previous year.  Documents from the Building Code, HR, MRDD, Planning, Probate, Prosecutor and Sheriff Departments were digitized.  These included 47 volumes of Probate Court Complete Records.   Also scanned were a large collection of aperture cards, which are computer punch cards that hold frames of microfilm.  The aperture cards belonged to the Newark City Government, and showed plans and maps from the Newark Division of Engineering.  Angie also created 98 microfilm rolls of permanent county records.

Angie and Corinne have been assisting the Probate Court Clerk’s Office with the use of OnBase document management software.  They also have been working on OnBase solutions for the Civil Division of the Prosecutor’s Office.

A screenshot of the OnBase document management sofware, showing
how the various pages of a document can be selected for viewing.

Sophia and Reference Archivist Bill Markley have been developing outreach resources for elementary-school-age children.  Bill worked on a timeline of Licking County history, which is almost finished.

Bill also completed a catalog of mostly unpublished Licking County resources that are located in the library of the Licking County Genealogical Society.  This information will be combined with that of the LCRA holdings, in an ongoing effort to develop a county-wide online catalog of archival materials.  Bill also created 140 new catalog entries of LCRA collections, which included early marriage records, and Coroner investigative reports from the 1960’s through the 1980’s.  He transferred between 15,000 and 20,000 pounds of obsolete county records to the Church Street facility for disposal.

Some of the items donated by Sheriff Gerry Billy, and cataloged in 2015

Sadly, volunteer Bob Grove left the department.  He reliably helped us with a variety of projects since 2012.  Bob recently finished cataloging several materials from the Emergency Management Agency, which date from the 1950’s through the 90’s.  Happily for Bob, he departed in order to assume the full-time position of Imaging and File Clerk for the Prosecutor’s Office.

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