Rockingham's e-Vault, a project a decade in the making, comes online

N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall was in Rockingham County on Thursday for the launch of e-Vault, an electronic database for records dating to the county's formation in 1787.

"This means citizens and businesses can access this information 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Marshall said at the county's governmental center. Marshall said e-Vault is "a kind of digital triumph for Rockingham County government."

Marshall called the electronic cataloguing of official records "the holy grail" of the past few years. Preserving an entire office's records in digital format is time-consuming and costly, and Rockingham is one of only a handful of counties in North Carolina that has all of its land records in digital format. The Register of Deeds office partnered with Aptitude Solutions on the project.

"This is a long day in coming," said Rebecca Cipriani, Rockingham register of deeds. "In addition to a physical vault, we now have a virtual vault. We are no longer bound by walls."

County residents still have the option of accessing records in the vault, but that involves coming to the courthouse during business hours, searching through records at a terminal and paying to print them. Residents can even apply for a marriage license on e-Vault.

"The road to the future goes through Rockingham County," said Marshall. "This place can be a leader in the state... Your success should not be determined by your zip code."

Marshall encourages the people of Rockingham County to "open their mind" and explore the possibilities.

"Cipriani's motto, 'Protecting the future, preserving the past,' is especially relevant as we unveil the e-Vault," said Maggie Collier of Aptitude Solutions.

Marshall shares Cipriani's vision to make her office's information available online. Since taking office, she has explored "e-filing, e-recording, e-notaries and e-commerce in general." Today, her office has "millions of image records" online.

"Government ought to be open; it ought to be disclosed," Marshall said. She said e-Vault will engage people with their government at the "infotainment" level, and county residents will access information on e-Vault at an astonishing rate.

Cipriani took office as register of deeds in 1998, and the office didn't have e-mail or Internet access. The Stoneville tornado of 1998 missed the office by a few miles, which, Cipriani said, served as a "wake-up call" toward getting a back-up method for protecting historical records.

"Paper records are good, but they will fail over time," Marshall said. "Sometimes your very best efforts to preserve the past can just simply fail." She gave the example of the Declaration of Independence, which she described as a "fading parchment." The manuscript is already nearly illegible and will continue to fade.

After 10 years of work, Cipriani has finally achieved her goal of trying to bring an "obscure office in the basement of the courthouse to the 21st century" through technology.

The earliest land records, dating back to 1787, were written in elaborate manuscript. The office's typed deeds date to 1904. In 1953, Photostats were the preferred technology for storing information. In 1964, the office began using aperture cards to preserve records. In 1984, microfilm was used, and in 1998 the office began using computer technology to document records.

"Technology has played a key role in the evolution of this office," Cipriani said.

• Staff writer Miranda Baines can be reached at mbaines@reidsvillereview.com or 349-4331, ext. 35.