More than 190,000 boxes with state history moved to new Frankfort building

Includes some court documents that go back 100 years

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Aug. 25, 2014) — More than 190,000 cardboard boxes filled with history of the commonwealth are being relocated to the new Kentucky State Records Center in Frankfort.

The State Records Center provides high-volume, low-cost storage and retrieval services to state government agencies for records with a limited retention period or for permanent records that are still in frequent use.
Once the retention period has been met, the records stored at the center are either transferred to the KDLA main building on Coffee Tree Road in Frankfort for permanent storage in the archives or are destroyed.

Last fiscal year, the center fulfilled more than 14,000 requests from agencies for files to be returned and/or copied.

The original paper records date back to the early part of the twentieth century, and include records from various state agencies and many circuit courts in Kentucky. Access to the records is only available through the records officer of each agency, rather than from the records center directly.  Records at the State Archives in the main KDLA building are available for public use.

The records include court documents, such as civil and criminal cases including divorce records; adoptions files; finger print cards; social worker case files; state personnel information; police investigations and corrections records from many prisons in Kentucky. There are even patient records from the old Eastern State Hospital dating from the 1800s, but they are restricted because of privacy laws.

The new facility is 100,000 square feet, an increase from the combined 73,000 square feet at the two old buildings.