NORWICH – The Chenango County Office Building is overflowing with paper. Records and documents are piling up in offices, closets and vaults in Norwich as well as in off-site spaces at Preston Manor and even at the Pharsalia Landfill.

A large-scale interdepartmental scanning and indexing project will be implemented this year, said Chenango County Clerk Mary Weidman, with the assistance of a newly-formed records management committee and, quite possibly, a consulting firm.

“I’ll be asking this committee for money to hire a consultant, but it shouldn’t be an outrageous amount,” Weidman told members of the Agriculture, Buildings and Grounds Committee last Tuesday. She said clerk’s office workers who are retired may be re-hired on a part-time basis in order to offset any confidentiality concerns.

County government departments will first be surveyed in order to determine the volume or records and the management methods they may already be employing.

Weidman introduced the project to other committees meeting last week as well.

“It’s getting pretty critical to know what to do with records and where to store them,” she said.