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Construction on Hanover Township’s new firestation begins

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Letter to the Editor: Pennsylvania dairy farmers deserve support from lawmakers

<p>Call this a case of no good deed goes unpunished &#8211; or in this case, uncriticized.</p><p>Luzerne County recently provided the public with free online access to its Recorder of Deeds records dating from the late 1960s back to the county&#8217;s origin in 1786, a full 230 years ago. The computer database saves professional title searchers and others significant time, as they no longer must traipse to the courthouse annex in Wilkes-Barre each time they want to trace a property&#8217;s ownership. It also better preserves the much-valued records that, until now, existed only on paper and microfilm, some of which hadn&#8217;t held up well.</p><p>&#8220;This is all part of an effort to make records more easily accessible to the public,&#8221; said county Judicial Services and Records Division Head Joan Hoggarth.</p><p>Soon after the Times Leader reported on the records&#8217; widespread accessibility, however, certain people slammed the setup as &#8220;useless.&#8221; They apparently wanted to type in only a name or address, then have property information pop onto their screens. But the new system requires that a user know a property&#8217;s &#8220;book number,&#8221; which is printed on the deed.</p><p>&#8220;A waste of time and money,&#8221; wrote one online reader. &#8220;Who on earth knows the book number of the property they want to search?&#8221;</p><p>Another commenter at timesleader.com asked, &#8220;Why in God&#8217;s name didn&#8217;t they scan and save for name searches?&#8221;</p><p>Granted, a family history buff might not be able to use this system to instantly call up records on Aunt Gertrude&#8217;s property in Plains Township. But most current homeowners probably have access to a copy of their deed, on which they will find the book number and page number.</p><p>Once those numbers are in hand, you can backtrack to piece together a property&#8217;s transaction history.</p><p>Search the county&#8217;s records via its &#8220;<a href="https://www.searchiqs.com/paluze/Login.aspx" target="_blank">IQS E Film Reader</a>,&#8221; accessible by visiting www.luzernecounty.org and then choosing the menu items labeled &#8220;judicial services and records,&#8221; &#8220;recorder of deeds&#8221; and &#8220;document search link.&#8221; Viewing the recorded deeds via the &#8220;film reader&#8221; is free; however, printing a document costs $1.50 per page.</p><p>(More recent Luzerne County deed records, from 1963 to the present, also can be accessed remotely &#8211; for a fee &#8211; by using the <a href="http://www.landex.com/webstore/jsp/cart/DocumentSearch.jsp" target="_blank">Landex system</a>. Visit landex.com/webstore.)</p><p>In effect, the county paid to have its older deed records brought from the horse-and-buggy era into the automobile age, but certain users are demanding the self-driving sort.</p><p>&#8220;Customer service is a priority in the county,&#8221; Manager C. David Pedri has said.</p><p>If so, county officials should strive to make sure that future projects to computerize paper records &#8211; including certain marriage licenses, naturalization records, wills and estate files &#8211; match people&#8217;s high expectations.</p><style>
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Our Opinion: Luzerne County’s deed records available online, more or less