Since 2017, Lowndes County Deputy Chancery Clerk Cindy Eggar Goode has been building up her office’s online database of records, scanning in thousands of documents and carefully recording each one.
Now, the database contains everything from federal tax liens and their releases to property deeds and deeds of trust, mortgages, powers of attorney, county tax releases and certificates of trust — going back to February 2002. The database is publicly available and can be accessed from any computer or mobile device. Users don’t need to create an account, and accessing, downloading or printing documents is free.
Chancery Clerk Lisa Neese said the easy online access to public documents is a far cry from the “old days.”
“When I first started here (in 2002), there were people at the vault just waiting to look at the books (of records),” she said. “Now people can do it from their own computer or in their office.”
Although the database itself was established in fall 2017, the link to it was added to the Lowndes County website earlier this month as part of a wider effort to update the website, Neese said. As soon as it was made accessible to the public, Goode said the office started receiving “wonderful” feedback.
“We’ve had so many lawyers, abstractors and bankers call in and tell us they love it and compliment us on it,” she said.
The best feature of the database is the convenience, both Neese and Goode said. Before the database launched, anyone needing to see records filed at the chancery clerk’s office would have to visit the office in person and either look at computers in the vault or, if the documents pre-dated 2002, the heavy bound books kept on seemingly endless rows of shelves. Even if a document was on the computers, there was an overnight delay between when it was filed and when it would appear in records.
“Now, it’s instant,” Goode said. “If I had, say, a deed and recorded it, it was an overnight wait. Now, it’s available immediately. It doesn’t seem like much of a difference but if you can have it instantly, that’s even better.”
The current database cost about $70,000 to put together. Goode would like to add at least another 32 years worth of documents to the database, which would allow users to go back as far as 1988.
“There are some times when access is needed to information that far back,” she said. “But it is expensive, so we’re waiting on that for now.”
There’s no way to track how many visitors the database website has each month, but both Neese and Goode have noticed that foot traffic in the office has decreased as a result of the site’s availability.
There is one group that still faithfully comes in to use the office-based computers, Goode said: genealogical researchers.
“Some people come in town to do research for their genealogy,” she said. “And they’re usually a little bit older, not as great with technology, so we can help them through the database from the computer in the vault. It’s so easy to use, which is great.”
The only downside, as Neese sees it, is that the ability to print off documents from anywhere has lowered the amount the chancery clerk’s office takes in from copy fees.
“Whenever lawyers came in to get copies of documents, we’d keep a book with the numbers of copies they had,” she said. “That affected our bottom line, but we’re still doing just fine here. And it’s worth it for how convenient (the database) is.”
For Goode, who fields calls from surveyors, construction contractors, Realtors, lawyers and bankers outside of Lowndes County, it’s helpful to have a place to direct them where they can search, browse and print to their hearts’ content.
“We’ll have people call from out of town and say, ‘I need this document, how can I get it today?'” she said. “We can just point to the website and say, ‘Here you go.’ It’s instant, and it’s free.”
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