County records accessible for free online

Nathan Havenner, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.
·2 min read

May 19—The Daviess County Clerk's Office is making more records available online to area residents at no cost.

County Clerk Leslie McCarty said that while county records have been available online previously, there were some associated costs and limitations for use.

"When we started putting them online, you could create an account, but a commercial entity had to pay for it," she said. "If you were just doing it for your genealogy, you would get so many searches a day, and then you would have to come back the next day and do it."

Now businesses and individuals searching records online through the county website — www.daviessky.org — are unlimited in how many records they can search at one time.

McCarty said the service is paid for by the clerk's office and is made available through a content management system called eCCLIX.

Users must sign up for a free account to access the system, which has records ranging from marriages and deeds to mortgages.

McCarty said it is important for the clerk's office to make these records easily accessible for the public.

"They are public records, they are their records," she said. "They pay a lot in taxes for all the services here, so I think it is good to invest in our people and have something for them to utilize at any time."

While virtual record keeping might be the way of the future, McCarty said physical copies of all county records are still maintained at the Daviess County Courthouse.

"Space is always a concern, but having the two versions of a record, a digital copy backed up on a server and having a physical copy, if anything happens here at the courthouse to that physical copy, we always have the digital copy as a backup," she said.

The records room at the courthouse is undergoing a renovation that will add an expected 10-15 years of record storage space, McCarty said.

"We started this project early in the year, probably in February or March, and just like with everything else, everything is on backorder, so it will be a little bit before we get the final products in to finish the remodel," she said. "I think it is going to be well worth it, because we were basically out of room downstairs in the records room."