Jasper County allows for 50 drainage district maps to be digitized

Following a Jasper County citizen’s request last spring to digitize a historic drainage district map, the supervisors this past week decided to pay for the digitization of 50 other documents and look into whether a few frailer maps could be recorded as well. The board unanimously approved the $3,165 quote.

Joe Otto, of Colfax, was given permission in April to borrow and digitize a more than 100-year-old drainage district map of Jasper County. In return for letting him borrow the document, he would turn over the digital file of the map to the county. He did not ask for a fee but said in the future he may provide them a quote.

Midwest History Services, LLC, which is owned by Otto, provided service estimates for 50 of 54 drainage district maps ranging in dates from the 1950s to 1960s. Otto said he had been working with the auditor’s office on a plan to begin digitizing the documents, many of which only need a small scanner.

Five of the 50 maps require a larger scanner. But the four documents that are unaccounted for and still need an estimate are in a very unstable condition; so much so they could not be rolled out properly. Otto said age and possibly moisture may have stiffened the maps and made them very brittle.

“I’d like to take those four, along with the 50 that have been estimated here, and get an opinion from the digitizer about whether they can be gently moistened and unrolled (and) digitized eventually,” he said. “They may come back and say that’s impossible … At the end of the day, 50 out of 54 can be digitized for this price.”

It is important to note that Midwest History Services is not the digitizer of the documents. But Otto will be consulting with the digitizer. It is likely extra expenses will be added for preparing the four documents for scanning, but it cannot be known until they are in the custody of the digitizer.

Iowa practices what is known as “format neutrality” for retaining records, which means a public record is determined by its content and not what form it is kept. Be it electronic or physical, the information must be preserved. So if a map or other record is in bad shape, it is important to scan it and record its contents.

“The map itself isn’t necessarily a vital record at that point as long as you have it digitized,” Otto said. “That is the first thing that should be considered is what you have to do by law. The second thing is kind of conservationist ethics about if we can save the maps we should, but it’s not required by law to do so.”