Additional Records Now Available Online!

Image from Salt Lake County Civil and Criminal Court Minute Books, 1852-1887. Series PC- 305.

New records series that are now available on our Digital Archives page include:

Salt Lake County Civil and Criminal Court Docket Books and Minute Books, 1852-1887. Series PC-304 and PC-305. Includes divorce cases. The corresponding Civil and Criminal Court Case Files will be uploaded as they are digitized.

Salt Lake County Land Claim Record Books, 1871-1894. Series PC-010. Administrative records supporting the process leading to the granting of Land Title Certificates (see below).

Salt Lake County Land Title Certificates, 1851-1895 (bulk 1870s). Series PC-001. Now searchable and viewable online through last names beginning with “R.”

Salt Lake County Planning Commission Meeting Minutes, 1944-2019. Series PD-027.

Salt Lake County Plat Maps, 1962-1963. Series RC-106. Includes some Pioneer Plat Maps, 1852-1892.

Excerpt from the George M. Cannon Plat Book, 1867. Salt Lake County Recorder. Pioneer Plat Maps, 1887-1888. Series RC-106.

Mining Records Now Online

Do you have an ancestor that was involved in mining? Do you enjoy rock hounding? Are you part of the Utah Abandoned Mines group on Facebook? Then you’ll love this! The Salt Lake County Archives has posted its mining records on our website! Staff spent several weeks digitizing the ledgers for various mining records so that there would be public access to the documents. A complete overview, including determining preservation needs and research value, was conducted. The conclusion found a large gap in the free access to mining records online across the state of Utah.

Now you can search many of Salt Lake County’s mining records to your heart’s content, looking for that mining claim, writing your history book, or trying to find that ancestor who claimed to have a mineral vein that made them rich!

An example of an index arranged by owner name. Salt Lake County Recorder, Index to Mining Deed Record Book Q, Series RC-044.

Some of the indexes are only accessible through the name of the mining claim. Salt Lake County Recorder, Mining Abstracts Index Book A, Series RC-041.

Along with the digitized records being available, a descriptive guide for the mining records series has been created and is accessible on our website.

For additional research in to mining in Salt Lake County, check out the additional records held by the Salt Lake County Recorder’s office.

~Entry contributed by Daniel Cureton, Archivist.

10.10.15

Survival Strategies for Personal Digital Records

Electronic files are much more fragile than paper records, and their long-term survival requires attention and planning. These tips can help you better preserve your personal digital collections.

Personal Files:

• Focus on your most important files. These files may include: resumes, school papers, financial spreadsheets, letters, maps, and family histories.
  • Decide which documents have long-term value and focus your efforts there.
• Print out your most critical files to protect them against loss.  Doing so increases the chances that your documents and images will remain accessible and allows you to focus upon backing up and copying/migrating files that cannot easily be printed out (e.g., databases, video files).
• Create multiple copies of the files and manage them in different places.  Doing so will keep your information safe even if your computer crashes.
  • Make at least two copies of your files – more copies are better.
• Organize your files by giving individual documents descriptive file names.  Creating a directory/folder structure on your computer will help you organize your files.  Write a brief description of the directory structure and the documents for future reference.
• Check your files at least once a year to make sure you can read them.  Every 3 – 5 years you will need to copy and migrate your files to a newer media.  Storage media have limited life spans, and hardware and software changes can keep you from accessing files stored on media that hasn’t deteriorated.
  • Use new, high-quality storage media. Avoid unknown brands.
• Convert important files to a universal output format such as plain text (.txt), Rich Text Format (.rtf), or PDF/A (a form of PDF designed to support long-term preservation).
  • Files created with obsolete software should be converted to newer formats to avoid losing access.

Digital Images:

• Back up and copy/migrate your images as outlined above
• Organize them as you create them.  It is much harder to identify thousands of images as time passes.
• In addition to facing the threats outlined above, image files are often compressed, which reduces file size but can permanently remove some visual information.  Save important images either uncompressed or with lossless compression. Good choices format choices include TIFF (.tif), and JPEG2000 (.jp2).
• The resulting files are often quite large, so treat them as “master copies” and create GIF (.gif) or JPEG (.jpg) “use copies” to share via e-mail or the Web.
• You can also print out your images.  To ensure that your images last for decades, order prints from a lab that will place them on an archival medium.

Additional Resources:

The Library of Congress is a great resource for information on personal digital archiving, found at: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/records.html

Key resources also include:

Why Digital Preservation is Important to Everyone:  http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/multimedia/videos/digipres.html

Preserving Your Digital Memories:  http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/documents/PA_All_brochure.pdf

The University of Michigan Library publication entitled Preserving Personal Digital Files is also a great resource. It contains a wealth of suggestions for further reading as well.  This publication can be found at: http://www.lib.umich.edu/files/services/preservation/PreservingPersonalDigitalFilesGuide.pdf

Thank you to CoSA for these recommendations.

10.10.15

October 10, 2015 is Electronic Records Day (get it? 1-0-1-0).  E-Records Day is designed to raise awareness among state government agencies, the general public, related professional organizations, and other stakeholders about the crucial role electronic records play in their world. This year, E-Records Day is highlighting the importance of appropriate management of electronic communications in government.

In recognition of Electronic Records Day 2015, here is a list of reasons why everyone should be thinking more about electronic records.

10 reasons why electronic records need special attention

1. Managing electronic records is like caring for a perpetual toddler: they need regular attention and care in order to remain accessible.

2. Electronic records can become unreadable very quickly. While records on paper have been read after thousands of years, digital files can be virtually inaccessible after just a few.

3. Scanning paper records is not the end of the preservation process: it is the beginning. Careful planning for ongoing management expenses must be involved as well.

4. There are no permanent storage media. Hard drives, CDs, Magnetic tape or any other storage formats will need to be tested and replaced on a regular schedule. Proactive management is required to avoid catastrophic loss of records.

5. The lack of a “physical” presence can make it very easy to lose track of electronic records. Special care must be taken to ensure they remain in controlled custody and do not get lost in masses of other data.

6. It can be easy to create copies of electronic records and share them with others, but this can raise concerns about the authenticity of those records. Extra security precautions are needed to ensure e-records are not altered inappropriately.

7. The best time to plan for electronic records preservation is when they are created. Don’t wait until software is being replaced or a project is ending to think about how records are going to be preserved.

8. No one system you buy will solve all your e-records problems. Despite what vendors say, there’s no magic bullet that will manage and preserve your e-records for you.

9. Electronic records can help ensure the rights of the public through greater accessibility than ever before, but only if creators, managers and users all recognize their importance and contribute resources to their preservation.

10. While they may seem commonplace now, electronic records will form the backbone of the historical record for researchers of the future.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow’s post for e-records day will be: Survival strategies for personal digital records.