Piecing Together the Past: Clerk David Orr's Genealogy Online

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2009

Clerk David Orr is the custodian of birth, marriage, and death certificates issued within Cook County, Illinois. Currently there are in excess of 28 million records kept by the Clerk, including about 8 million genealogy records. As defined by Illinois statue, birth records older than 75 years, marriage records older than 50 years, and death records older than 20 years are considered genealogy records and are available to people researching their family tree. In the past, customers seeking copies of these records had only two options for making requests: appear at the downtown office, fill out a form, and pay a $15 fee or mail in a request form with a check. Interest in genealogy has grown exponentially, making it the second largest internet activity. With the creation of an online genealogy store, the Clerk’s Office saw an opportunity to provide a greater service to a larger audience via the web, while reducing staff hours devoted to research, expanding a revenue stream and capitalizing on a document management system already in development. In 2008 the Clerk launched the website to an immediate, enthusiastic response. To date, the site has received more than 9.5 million hits from users located in 84 countries. The success of the project paid for itself in a matter of months.