In less than two years, Chester County’s most historic documents will be available online.

Thanks to improved scanning equipment, Chester County’s Archives & Records Services has accelerated the process of scanning and digitizing documents dating back to 1681. The goal: To make the collection publicly available on the county’s website so that people can easily acquire historic information.

The county installed a new scanner in January 2020 right before COVID hit, making this project possible. The department had been working with a less sophisticated scanner since 2007. To date, about 40 percent of the Archives’ collection has been digitized.

“Our goal is to have everything that is considered a historic, permanent record digitized,” said Chester County Commissioners’ Chairwoman Marian Moskowitz. “Some of the conversions are from microfilm to digital, while others are from the physical documents themselves to digital. The process of scanning originals is slow because they must be handled so delicately, and we are talking about 340 years of history here.”

You can read more in an article in the Daily Local News web site at: https://bit.ly/3QRltcE.