Bringing Park County’s old records from the last century into the new one is going to be costly.

Last week, the county signed a $211,000 contract to have its aging deeds, commission meeting minutes and other records converted to electronic formats.

“I think what we’re talking about is Park County’s history,” Commissioner Loren Grosskopf said before a unanimous Jan. 19 vote to move forward with the project. “We’re trying to preserve the history and not rely on a piece of paper, so we have a back-up.”

Part of the drive for the electronic preservation is that some of the paper records are deteriorating with age and continued use.

“I think it’s something that definitely needs to be done,” said Commissioner Lee Livingston. He said the digital records should also be more cost-effective going forward.

The contractor, ArcaSearch, plans to begin turning some 400,000 pages and microfilm images of county records into searchable PDF documents and JPEG images in late February or early March.

That’s when the county will ship its extensive collection of microfilm to ArcaSearch headquarters in Paynesville, Minnesota.

This summer, an ArcaSearch crew will then set up shop in the basement of the Park County Courthouse to photograph the county’s old mortgages, plats, contracts and other paper documents. Some date all the way back to 1897, when Park County was still a part of Big Horn County.

Park County Clerk Colleen Renner said the photography work at the courthouse will likely take ArcaSearch staffers six to eight weeks.

The clerk’s office — first under Jerri Torczon and now with Renner, her predecessor — has been urging the commission to digitize the old records for years.

Commissioners rejected a $171,762 bid from ArcaSearch in April 2014, in large part because it wasn’t in the budget that year.

Commissioners set aside $170,000 for the work this fiscal year. They’ll need to set aside more money next year, as ArcaSearch estimates the project will cost a total of $211,320.

Renner believes one reason ArcaSearch upped its bid from 2014 was that the company hadn’t initially realized how many documents the county wanted to digitize.

Renner had offered to leave out the county’s old agreements — contracts for construction projects, leases, etc. — to save some money (around $10,000), but commissioners wanted all the documents included.

“We’re already past that point, I think,” said Grosskopf. “I don’t want to be picking one segment of our historical records and say, ‘that’s less important than other ones.’”

He and the rest of the commission thought it a better idea to “bite the bullet” now.

“Just for information for a lot of folks sitting out there, this (bid from ArcaSearch) is the cheapest we’ve seen of anyone that proposed to do this,” Commissioner Livingston added during last week’s discussion.

Part of ArcaSearch’s work will involve building a secure, online and searchable database of all the old public records.

Commissioners had some qualms about being locked into ArcaSearch’s proprietary software, worrying that the company could decide to dramatically raise its annual fees for the service.

(The first year of service is included in the initial cost, with the second year to cost around $12,000.)

“They’re in full control,” said Commissioner Tim French of the rates, adding that it “scares me.”

However, Park County Chief Information Officer Mike Conners said the county — which will be getting two digital copies of all the records — could build its own database down the road if it had to.

“I would argue it is the cost of doing business, and most of the counties are doing it,” Conners said of subscribing to ArcaSearch’s software.

He added that the company has historically made fairly minimal cost increases and that other counties have been happy.

“This is the best solution out there, we believe, in our research that we’ve done,” said First Deputy Clerk Hans Odde.

Commissioners have not yet decided what kind of public access they’ll allow once the digital database is completed.