counties

Making the GIS case to county registries is a fascinating exercise, to be sure. Given the facts on paper, it should be a slam dunk: reams of location-specific data in the form of deeds and registered surveys and easements and all manner of other documents; much of this content already scanned to high quality digital formats; and no existing geospatial linkages permitting this content to be queried and accessed via a GIS front end.

So what to do?

Obvious! Geotag these scanned documents with an x,y reference that makes it easy to expose them to geographic searches.

And yet... Maybe not so obvious. The registers themselves are admirably dedicated to the serioiusness of the job, which is protecting and maintaining the integrity of vital documents. Any technology or procedural change that threatens this process is rightfully suspect. So the concept of potentially contaminating documents with shoddy geographic referencing is no easy sell to make.

It warrants serious consideration though. As information technology increases access to public records, whole new categories of opportunites tend to arise. It would be rewarding to see the County Registries benefit from these opportunities.