The Connecticut State Library began the Historic Documents Preservation Program on July 1, 2000. The program was created by CGS §11-8i to §11-8n and is funded by a portion of the fees paid on all land record documents filed by Connecticut Town Clerks’ offices. The program, administered by the State Public Records Administrator, has been established to help municipalities enhance and improve the preservation and management of their historic documents.

General Code is pleased to be participating in this significant and valuable grant program. “It has been very rewarding to provide communities with products and services that help to improve their quality of work life,” says General Code Connecticut Representative, Carol Vanderslice. The following profiles are of projects we have recently completed, as well as projects that will soon be underway.

Sara D'Elia, Clerk of the Town of Putnam, Connecticut

In January 2004, the Town of Putnam was awarded a grant to digitize its Town Board Meeting minutes. All of the minutes from 1855 to 2003 (including older bound volumes) were scanned and captured as electronic images. These images, over 3,000 in total, were then imported to the Laserfiche document imaging system. The Clerk’s office, by using a word or phrase search, is now able to retrieve in seconds specific information within the nearly 150 years worth of minutes. New information is easily added by either scanning pages or importing electronic documents using the SnapShot Plug-in that came with the system.

Town Clerk Sara D’Elia would like to add other types of documents to the system, such as older vital records. Those that exist on microfilm can be easily converted into digital images which can be imported into the Laserfiche system.

Municipal Offices of the Town of Bolton, Connecticut

To find a better way to store and retrieve information within its various board meeting minutes, the Town of Bolton applied for an historic preservation grant. In December 2004, the town was awarded a grant to scan its board minutes and implement a Laserfiche document imaging system. Minutes from the Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance, Planning and Zoning, Planning Commission, Zoning Commission and Zoning Board of Appeals dated as far back as 1944. All 8,080 pages were scanned, and Laserfiche can now instantly locate any specific information contained within them. By installing a network version of Laserfiche, multiple users can access the information.

According to Town Clerk Susan DePold, updating new meeting minutes has been simple. A representative from each board sends her an e-mail with that particular board’s minutes attached. Susan uses the SnapShot Plug-In to import the document into Laserfiche, and in a matter of a few clicks, the document is instantly retrievable.

Although these projects only included meeting minutes, a Laserfiche system is capable of storing any type of document. These may include vital records, maps, drawings, building department files, and even photographs. The system also provides an easy method to transfer images to microfilm. Once documents have been scanned into the system, the images can be copied onto CDs which can be sent out for transfer onto microfilm. This is much more cost effective and it eliminates the need to ship or send documents out of the town hall.

New projects that are just getting underway include the Town of Andover and the Town of East Hampton.

The Town of Andover was recently awarded a grant to archive over 10,000 pages of meeting minutes from the following boards: Town Record, Board of Finance, Board of Selectman, Zoning Board of Appeals, Planning and Zoning and Inland Wetlands. In addition to scanning the minutes, the Town will also receive a copy on microfilm.

The Laserfiche system will be installed on the town's network, so multiple users will be able to access the documents. The town also plans to place a workstation at the Clerk’s counter to allow public access to specific documents.

Codification is also covered by the state program, and the Town of East Hampton was recently awarded a grant to codify the town’s legislation. This project will include a complete review and analysis of the town’s legislation as well as printed and electronic copies of the Town Code. A full-text searchable version of the Code will be made available via the Internet. This will provide all town employees and residents full access to the Town Code 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For more information regarding this grant program, contact the Connecticut Public Records Grant Specialist, LeAnn Johnson, at: 860-566-1100 ext 301. Information can also be found at www.cslib.org/histdoc/index.htm.

To contact our Connecticut Regional Representative, Carol Vanderslice, call 1-800-836-8834 or e-mail her at .

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