You can now access Bonneville County historical records online
Published at
IDAHO FALLS — Locals will soon be able to access historical county records through thew Bonneville County website.
Bonneville County Systems Administrator Brian Powell says the county is doing away with its former computer system and implementing the Eagle Recorder software. Powell said users will be able to access 2 million records that the county has available. They date all the way back to 1911.
Employees put in countless hours over the last year digitizing paper documents.
“It’s going to change over to a more user-friendly, web-based system, and it’s even going to be cloud based as well,” Powell said. “In the vault in the clerk’s office, there was about 800,000 land records, marriage license and military discharge records that we converted as well. Those will be available in the system. There’s about 1.4 million records that are already in our legacy system.”
The Eagle Recorder clerks will be able to process documents a lot faster with fewer mistakes, county officials said.
Patrons can also process documents like marriage licenses through a self-service computer. This eliminates the step of having to fill out documents by hand, though a clerk will still have to verify your identification.
“(The public will be) able to process marriage licenses, catering permits, alcohol permits, a lot cleaner and faster … through a self-service kiosks that are now in the clerk’s office,” Powell said.
Along with the kiosk, the public can access the software online, process records at home and pick them up at the courthouse.
Powell said the public can access about 6,000 old surveys or plats that were scanned into the system at a high resolution.
“The records that were converted were all in big large books. They were on microfiche and that kind of thing, and now they’re all digitized so people can view them a little easier,” County Clerk Penny Manning said. “We’re really excited about this going forward.”
County Commissioner Bryon Reed says the new system was a great investment.The cloud based software will cost the county $60,000 per year.
“It’s a considerable expense for the county, but we feel like it really is going to make some great improvements and provide much better service for the residents of the county,” Reed said.
Powell said the system will be funded through user fees, not tax dollars.
“We’re very careful in deciding how the fees are set up,” Powell said. “Those that use the system pay for the system, and those that don’t use the system don’t pay for the system.”
The clerks office will be closed April 28 to finalize document conversions. As a courtesy to the public, the clerks office will be open until 7 p.m. on April 27. The new software launches May 1.