State register of deeds recognized for innovation
Jaymi S. Kohn, Taylor County Register of Deeds, announces the Wisconsin Register of Deeds Association (WRDA) has received the 2022 Governor’s Award for Archival Innovation.
The award is administered in cooperation with the Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board and recognizes individuals, programs or organizations that successfully experiment with new ways to demonstrate the significance or relevance of historical records for understanding the past or that use historical records to reach new audiences.
WRDA was formed in 1918 and continues to work with its business partners throughout the state and nation to provide services that are convenient, efficient, beneficial, and safe through technology, system modernization and implementing statutory changes. The Taylor County Register of Deeds Office along with WRDA and the national organization Property Records Industry Association (PRIA) has been proactive ensuring that real estate records which are vital to the county and state economy are accessible.
Kohn notes that the Register of Deeds office personnel is diligent about archiving and preserving the historical records maintained in the ROD office. The Taylor County Register of Deeds Office has recorded and maintains nearly 400,000 documents permanently. Previous Register of Deeds Sarah Nuernberger and Marvel Lemke implemented modern technology to provide online access 24/7 to the public. These efforts continue as the ROD staff continues to image and index historical documents, preserving these documents for the future and making them available via the Taylor County Land-Shark website.
The availability of LandShark allowed title companies, real estate agents and financial institutions to access the important land records needed to complete real estate transactions during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the previous two years were the busiest years for real property sales in many years. Having online access to real estate records saved LandShark users valuable time that would have been spent traveling to the courthouse to access the paper records.
