Recorders' offices launched on the Web

Salt Lake County, Utah Recorder Nancy Workman launched her office onto the World Wide Web last year.

The Maricopa County, Ariz. Recorder's office has taken digital imaging one step further. Last summer, the county was one of the first in the country to make available millions of deeds and other land-related documents on the World Wide Web. The initial cost was about $48,000.

The site is currently linked to the Maricopa County home page under "County Records and Maps," but the recorder's office is working to get its own Internet address.

The main reason the site was launched is to make the records more convenient for the public to access. "We're in the middle of downtown Phoenix," explained Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, adding that fighting traffic and finding a parking space can be aggravating and time-consuming.

She said plans are under way for launching a "business-only" subscription service this summer that will help pay for the new system.

Barbara Frerichs, project leader, laughs as she says she "didn't even know what a computer was" when she started working there 25 years ago.

The recorder's office, which began scanning images in 1989, now sees about 300 people per day access its Web site. Just last month, 12,000 people accessed the site. Recently, a record 1,000 visited in one day, Frerichs noted. Purcell noted that many of the "hits" are from real estate agents or get-rich quick types who like to peruse the land records.

Access to the system requires a Macintosh or IBM-compatible PC with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.

The public can access the site from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.; there's "down time" for back-ups, Frerichs said. The county clerk's office also has 10 computer workstations for the public in its lobby. The wait for a computer was sometimes an hour before Internet access.

An index of documents goes back to Jan. 1, 1983. The public can actually view documents from Sept. 3, 1991 to the present.

The hardest part is in the launching
Although these days the system is working quite smoothly, Frerichs said the hardest part of launching onto the Internet was in the beginning stages, getting all the vendors to work together to come up with a cohesive system.

Another downside to having documents on the Internet is that every now and then, there are equipment problems that make the information inaccessible. The public "gets a little cranky because they can't get their information," Frerichs said. "We do our darndest and sometimes it's not good enough."

Frerichs echoes comments by NACRC President Maxine Olson-Hill, that the public has become used to getting information quickly.

"It's hard to benchmark yourself," Frerichs says, when you're one of the few counties offering the service. (Frerichs said she didn't know how many other counties offer the service.)

The site receives copy requests from all over - California, New York, Hawaii, she noted. Many property owners who live in the area solely during the winter request copies of property records for tax purposes or for refinancing.

Frerichs said the office is getting quite a few e-mails from county clerks and recorders asking what not to do in launching their own site. "We're more than happy to help them," she said, noting that most county officials say the financial aspect is what is holding them back from launching on the Internet.

Maricopa County is working on setting up a money-making service strictly for commercial users, such as private investigators, life insurance agents, realtors, banks, credit agencies and search agencies "who would be more than happy to pay a fee" for information tailored specifically to them, Frerichs noted.

Salt Lake County Recorder's office online
The Salt Lake County Recorder's Web site differs from Maricopa in that it is a subscription-only service. Currently, there are 300 subscribers (Utah title companies, realtors, engineers, surveyors and banks). There is a $100 sign-up fee, a $50 hook-up fee and $25 a month charge. There is a 1-cent copying fee per screen image and $1 for a map. For official copies, they must come into the recorder's office.

Title research companies and property investment firms from Hawaii, Colorado, California and Texas are also subscribers. Each subscriber is given a username and password. The recorder's office can see who is online and can monitor if needed.

The revenue from the fees is growing every day and paying for the start-up costs, Workman said. She will lower the fees "if we start making money."

Putting the recorder's office on-line "was the premise I ran on," in her successful race for the office in 1994, said Salt Lake County, Utah Recorder Nancy Workman.

Dustin Butler, director of the system, says Workman had the skills that were the most needed in such an undertaking: administration and coordination.

"I'm a contractor by trade," she said, explaining how she took the bull by the horns to automate the office (there were no desktop computers when she took office).

She spent the first six months figuring out what was needed to automate the office - to scan documents and launch them on a Web site. Although she did not know what technological equipment was needed to get the job done, Workman said she did know what she wanted done. "I said we wanted to record x amount of documents, that we need to accomplish that in x amount of time, that we want better images and we wanted a certain workflow to go to appropriate desktops and I said I wanted it to work 98 percent of the time."

The first year, Workman did not get the funding she needed. The second year, she did. She attended digital imaging conferences to get a list of vendors together and sent her specifications out for proposal. She spent $750,000, which included the purchase of 35 PCs. The office went on-line July 1, 1997. The system is called POLARIS, short for Public Online Access to the Recorder's Imaging System.

"What used to take six to seven weeks we now do in a couple of hours," Workman said.

Butler says the convenience to the businesses that use the new service is significant. "They now have the ability to get the information quickly and inexpensively. They don't have to fight traffic and send someone to the office." Butler points out that other county offices also benefit - the treasurer's office, surveyor's, assessor's and auditor's offices can all access the site instead of sending people to the office to look up information.

The office has almost three million documents online. While many offices use microfiche as a back-up, Workman's office is now scanning its microfiche, putting documents on microfilm and backing up its electronic images and storing them on an "optical jukebox."

The office scans about 5,000 documents each day. Currently, documents from 1995 to the present can be viewed 24 hours a day. (The system does down on Saturday nights at midnight until 8 a.m.) Workman continues to "back-scan" documents and hopes to go all the way back to records dating back to 1850. "I probably won't be alive," by the time those records are scanned, she joked.