Putnam County’s Register of Deeds is moving its deed books online.
Register of Deeds John Sanders said the books date back to 1854. He said they need to be put online for the convenience of taxpayers and people who do title searches. He said the books also need to be moved online to preserve the original copies of the older deeds.
“Those books were deteriorating at a much faster rate than what they should be because we have people that come in and make copies and scan them and stuff,” Sanders said. “So with those being handled all the time, the covers are coming off, the pages are starting to fade.”
Sanders said there are 103 warranty deed books that have yet to be put online, each containing over 600 pages. He said the department has had to seek help from outside companies because they do not have the resources to do it all themselves.
“The process was begun several years ago with the employees in the office trying to back scan those books,” Sanders said. “But it is a long process, and to be quite honest we don’t have the manpower to be able to do that effectively.”
Sanders said there was a big push from voters when he was running for the Register position who wanted to know if he would begin the process of putting the books online. He said even with outside help from companies that specialize in back scanning, a large percentage of the work still falls on the employees of the department.
“They’re only going to back scan the document,” Sanders said. “Our employees will still have to go into each one and index it.”
Sanders said all future deed books will be exclusively online, with no more physical copies being produced.
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