Securing our history: ERHS tackles tax record digitization

Paper. It’s an everyday item, often taken for granted by those using it. It’s been in use for thousands of years to record history, whether by hand or print. But paper is highly susceptible to the perils of age, which is why the Eagle River Historical Society (ERHS) has started digitizing important local records and documents for future use.

One of the society’s first major undertakings is in effect now, with staff and volunteers digitally scanning the aged paper tax records for the City of Eagle River. The joint effort between the city and ERHS aims to preserve and maintain city real estate and tax assessment records in order to ensure the historical documents — which are considered public record — are always accessible to the public.

ERHS Executive Director Vito Bortolotti said the scanning project is quite an undertaking, with books dating from 1885 to 1907. These records begin before Vilas County existed — when Eagle River was still a part of Oneida County — and traverse its transition from a village to town to city.

“The project is a time-consuming one, and while we have only 22 years worth of books to scan, many of these books are hundreds of pages and are extremely fragile,” Bortolotti said.

ERHS began the project last fall with hopes of completing the scans and getting the documents available online by this spring.

Eagle River Clerk Becky Bolte said that by digitizing these old records, the public will be able to view them at will once the historical society completes the project.

“We are very fortunate that the historical society has offered to do this to retain this historical information,” Bolte said. “Vito tells me Vilas County has digital copies of each tax roll book since Eagle River became part of Vilas and his docent is working on tax roll books beforehand. The books are stored by the city for safekeeping but this ensures they cannot be lost due to some unforeseen circumstance.”

Volunteerism at work

The enthusiasm of ERHS volunteer Stafford Crossland is the driving force behind the progress being made. Crossland’s past experience has been a benefit to the project. He completed an internship at the Smithsonian in the late 1970s and has kept himself well-versed and up-to-date on museum protocols, Bortolotti noted.

The tax record project is being completed in conjunction with ERHS’ first phase of its yearbook project, which began last spring. The society has been working with Northland Pines High School to scan all its yearbooks from 1950-2000.

The scanning process is being completed using a CZUR Bookscanner, courtesy of the Northland Pines School District. The quality of the scans will utilize optical character recognition, which allows digitized records to be easily searchable provided the scanned content is legible enough for the technology to process it.

Although Bortolotti expects the tax records to be available online by this spring, he emphasized that the content won’t be fully “usable” for years.
“Scanning is the first step for our organization. Since the hard copy records can’t leave city hall, taking the digital records home means that we can index the property records, making the information more retrievable than it was before,” he explained.

“Projects like this allow us as an organization to be more accurate when we develop exhibits, publish printed materials, give tours downtown or presentations in businesses, so we appreciate the City of Eagle River supporting our efforts in preserving our local history. We try to be as accurate as we can, and tax assessor records give us a unique window into who owned what property at what time.”

Since taking over as executive director, Bortolotti has focused his attention on digitization in order to preserve historical documents. Scanning these tax records is just one undertaking he and ERHS are moving forward with.

“Since 2024 we have been slowly stockpiling digital information and starting scanning projects so that when these projects conclude or come to a head we can gradually release it over the course of 2026, which is our 60th anniversary,” Bortolotti said.

“As an organization, we have been moving in a direction that allows us to make our archival information free to the public. We have so many things tucked away in bookcases and filing cabinets that the community deserves to have access to. We can’t put everything on display and half the time people don’t even know what we have in our collection, so these projects are a way for us to share our local history with locals at no cost.”

Bortolotti invites anyone in the community who would like to get involved in our projects to contact ERHS. Historical collections are available online at eagleriverhistory.org.

For more information on what ERHS does, gaining access to archives, or volunteering your time, contact 715-891-8770 or erhsdirector@gmail.com.