PARIS – Oxford County’s Registry of Deeds office for eastern Oxford County is going online.

All records of deeds, mortgages, discharges, liens and anything affecting the ownership of land dating back to 1971 have been scanned into a database that is available on the Internet at www.mainelandrecords.com.

The service, which began in October, is free until Dec. 1. After that a fee of $50 a month will be charged to people who use the register regularly, such as lawyers and title searchers.

A per-access fee of $3 per document view will also be available, said Oxford East’s register of deeds, Jane Rich.

Rich said her office is one of three counties in the state with electronic records available via the Internet. The others are Cumberland and Somerset counties.

She said the scanning and transfer of records was paid for by $163,000 in surcharge fees she’s been able to save over the years because of the switch to a compact book system by former Register Olive Moore.

Moore changed the process of how records were microfilmed beginning in 1971, Rich said, which enabled the documents in the compact book system to be scanned into a computer database.

American Computer Systems began the work in January, and the system went online in October. There are five computer terminals in the office in the Oxford County Courthouse, where users can gain access to records by typing in the name of a property owner. The search can be narrowed by choosing a town or type of property record.

Once the document is found, it can be printed at the click of a button.

After Dec. 1, when the fee system will take effect, users may still go into the vault and gain access the document from a computer terminal, then pay a clerk for printing costs.

Rich said the new system will make it unnecessary for her office to make books containing the records. After Dec. 31, she said, registry books will no longer be produced.

It’s a good thing, too, she said; the registry’s records room is running out of space.

In the future, said Rich, she wants to scan subdivision and other property maps into the database. Such maps are also used regularly by surveyors, abstractors and attorneys, she said.

Eventually, she would like to have pre-1971 records also available electronically. This will be completed as funds from the surcharge fund are available.

“And the great part is, none of this is costing the taxpayers of Oxford County one cent,” she said.

More information may be obtained by calling the registry office at 743-6211.