SW Indiana county approves plan to digitize old records

PRINCETON, Ind. (AP) - A southwestern Indiana county has approved a plan to digitally preserve reams of court records dating to the 19th century.

Gibson County's commissioners awarded a $61,000 contract Tuesday to an Indianapolis-based technology company to covert the records stored in Princeton, about 25 miles north of Evansville.

The Princeton Daily Clarion reports (http://bit.ly/2em1cvJ ) that the initial plan calls for about a million pages of court order books and case files to be digitally scanned to create a searchable database available to the public.

As that work begins, volunteers from the Princeton Public Library are rescuing boxes of damp, musty records from the basement of the old Princeton Sanitorium to dry them out for preservation. That effort is expected to take a year or more.

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Information from: Princeton Daily Clarion, http://www.tristate-media.com/pdclarion