In the coming

months, Peachtree City residents will be able to dial up minutes from

City Council meetings dating all the way back to the city's beginnings

in 1959 via the Internet.

The city will

have a link from its web site, www.peachtree-city.org , that hooks

up to an electronic archive of the city minutes. Keyword searches of that

database can be performed, which will take a lot of the heartache out

of researching what council did several or many years ago, said City Clerk

Nancy Faulkner.

For example,

a search for a certain word in the Laserfiche database could yield several

"hits." As the user clicks on each hit, two screens pop up one

is an actual "photograph" of the minutes from the city's minutes

records, and the other is the computer's translation of that paper into

text.

"It's

going to be so great," Faulkner said. "I can't tell you how

many times I have to search for things in the minutes."

The only potential

frustration for citizens looking at minutes online is that only five users

can be on the service at one time. That's because the city only purchased

five software usage licenses, although it could buy more in the future

if the service proves to be popular, Faulkner said.

"This

will go a long way to help providing better access to city government

for our citizens," Faulkner said.

The city will

continuously add to the database of council meeting minutes as Faulkner

plans to update the database with the new council minutes fewer than two

weeks after each council meeting. And if council votes on changing the

minutes later, she can make those changes in the database itself.

Faulkner said

the city plans to add more types of city documents to the online collection,

although everything can't be put online. The city will look at the need

for the types of documents based on how often they're being requested,

she said.

"It's

going to take a while before we have a big database built up," Faulkner

said.

For example,

minutes of the city's commissions and authorities could be next on the

city's online publishing wish list, Faulkner said. Documents from the

planning and zoning department are also requested often and would be nice

to add soon, she said.

"We're

not going to put anything on there that's not an open record," Faulkner

added.

The city has

its own in-house computer equipment for scanning the material into the

database. And once it's scanned, it automatically becomes a part of the

database, Faulkner said.

Peachtree City

currently posts information provided in the "council packets"

online before each city council meeting. But the format will change as

the packets are put on the Laserfiche service.

That way, users

can employ a keyword search to find information in specific packets, Faulkner

said.

The minutes

from council meetings are already scanned into the database, but the city's

computer experts have to work out a few kinks before making the database

available online.

City ordinances

will remain in a separate database online that's maintained by a company

hired by the city, Faulkner said. The software that runs that system is

being upgraded to fix a few recurring glitches, she said.