Document Search System

In the summer of 2003, Jefferson County of the State of Montana contacted Front Desk Software to see if we could help them with a problem. They wanted to create a system that would store images of their various public documents so that the Jefferson county staff and the public could easily search through documents and view them without having to leaf through pages of county records. The Jefferson county clerk and recorder personnel had looked at several document imaging systems and either found them too complicated for use by the general public or simply to expensive for a small county government to implement.
 

Solution
 

The solution Front Desk Software created for the Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder's Office was the Document Search System (DSS). This windows based application allows the clerk and recorder staff to scan in documents, associate them with keywords, legal township/range/section information, document dates and several other search criteria. These document images are stored on the Jefferson County local area network where they are available to any agency within the county.

The DSS application was developed at a cost of $18,000, including enhancements requested by the county after the system had been in use for several months. Total time for completion of the project was six months including a two month user acceptance testing period.
 

The primary advantage of the DSS application is its ability to search for documents once they have been scanned into the system. There are many different criteria which to use to search upon.

One very important feature of the DSS system is its ability to use OCR technology to automatically scan a document for keywords. The system allows the user to select or enter keywords 'on the fly' so that as more documents are scanned, the more keywords it will find through the OCR capabilities.

  
 
Once the search criteria is entered, the user is presented with a list of documents that meet them. The user simply has to pick the document they wish to view.
 

Viewing a document is quite simple as well. The viewer has the capability of scrolling to see more of the document, zooming in and out, as well as the capability to print the document. Documents may also consist of more than one page and the user may move through these pages as well.

Note that this document is one of the original county documents from around 1870 and yet the scanned image is quite readable.

  
 
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