Government records on paper are yesterday's technology

Licking County Commissioners are considering places in which to store their paper records.

The Advocate report said: "After almost 20 years of discussion, the Licking County commissioners soon might move forward with a new center to house records from each of the county departments."

As pointed out in an on-line comment to that report, today's technology for record storage and retrieval is by going digital. Hiring a document management company - or buying the equipment - instead of storing and filing all those old records likely is coming some day anyway, so maybe this is the time to begin.

With a Google aimed at "government document management" I quickly learned what this person was talking about by blundering to "Xerox DocuShare Industries" to which is linked another web page that talks about the conversion of all paper records of Newark NJ to a digital system. "City Government Goes Paperless" is at this link.

It makes perfect sense to research the possibilities for having public records scanned and stored digitally. I have no idea about the cost of this relative to the refurbishing of an old building, moving all the paper records there, and filing them for retrieval.

It may be a lot cheaper - or not; but if the idea hasn't been given serious study, now's the time to do that.