The City of Crestwood has been awarded a $5,075 grant from the Missouri Secretary of State for records preservation. This grant will allow the City to convert and digitize 17,500 pages in old ordinances/minutes/resolutions. Staff estimates this will enable the preservation of critical legislative records from 1947 through, hopefully, the 1990s.
The City Administrator, Kris Simpson, stated in an email:
· These documents will be preserved on microfilm with one copy saved at Crestwood and another to be sent to the vault at the Secretary of State. In the event of a major disaster, that will allow us to get access to these important files.
· Additionally, these documents will be digitally scanned using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) making all of these digitally searchable. This will facilitate historical records research. We will also store the digital documents in our file system which is backed-up multiple times per day with copies kept on two separate out-of-state servers, further enhancing the survivability of our files.
· Staff is investigating whether it is possible to make the digital records available via our online Municipal Code system.
· The grant requires a local match. Our match consists of up to 120 hours of staff time, plus a few hundred dollars’ worth of supplies and shipping costs.
· This effort comes at a critical time, as our oldest records are yellowed and extremely fragile.
Big Kudos to Helen Ingold and Jeff Faust for their work in obtaining this grant!