Records Management
Harrison County was the first county in Mississippi to join the Local Government Records program in 1996 and adopt the $1 records management fee added to all recording fees. The Board of Supervisors appointed the Chancery Clerk as official custodian of the County's records.
Since the records management program began, Chancery Clerk employees have spent many hours sorting, identifying and organizing older records that have been stored in various County facilities, while creating procedures for storage of newer records.
Retention schedules adopted by the Local Government Records Committee allow the County to dispose of a number of older records no longer necessary for the function of County government, while the records management fee provides funding for restoration and preservation of permanent records. In 2001-02 volunteers from the Genealogical Society of Utah microfilmed many of the older Chancery Court, land, voter registration and marriage records.
Harrison County contracts with a commercial off-site storage facility for storing many of our older records, saving valuable office space that would otherwise be needed for these records. The County's efforts at records management earned it Mississippi Historical Society's 2001 James T. Dawson Award for an outstanding records management program.