A Century of Property Records, Preserved Book by Book

GOVERNMENT RECORDS MODERNIZATION

A Century of Property Records, Preserved Book by Book

Gilliam County, Oregon · County Clerk’s Office

Gilliam County’s deed and mortgage history reached back to 1874 — bound ledgers, oversized mechanical books, and photostat copies that had outlived the equipment built to read them.

 

31,300

IMAGES DIGITIZED

1874–1972

RECORDS PRESERVED

2011–2023

COUNTY PARTNERSHIP

THE SITUATION

Gilliam County’s Deed and Mortgage Record books ran nearly a century deep — bound volumes, oversized mechanical books, and mechanical photostat copies, much of it worn past easy reading. A fifth of the pages were in poor condition, half carried more than one document crowded onto a single sheet, a tenth had been shot in reversed polarity, and a quarter carried marginal notations that still had to stay legible. None of it met a modern archival standard, and the county risked losing access before anyone digitized it.

THE APPROACH

iBridge scanned and converted every volume to TIFF, then ran border cleanup, inspection, duplicate detection, and Book/Page indexing before a final enhancement pass tuned to the county’s hardest cases — poor-condition pages, multi-document sheets, reversed-polarity scans, and marginal notations. The work built on a relationship dating to 2011, with Deed and Mortgage Records handled as separate statements of work signed in 2022 and 2023 as the program grew.

—  Three media types processed under one indexing standard: Bound Books, Oversized Mechanical Books, and Mechanical Photostat Books

—  Deed Records (21,600 images) and Mortgage Records (9,700 images) completed as two phases of one long-running county partnership

31,300 images across nearly a century of deed and mortgage history — indexed, enhanced, and archived to last.

 

THE RESULT

The program is completed and billed, with Gilliam County holding a fully indexed, archival-quality digital record of its property history from 1874 through 1972. Total revenue across the combined 31,300-image program came to $3,036.10.

WHY IT MATTERS

The Gilliam County engagement shows iBridge sustaining a multi-year government records partnership — expanding scope across record types and media formats under one consistent indexing and quality standard, the same capability behind its GSA Schedule and CMAS contract work.