Hello to all,
In case you missed the notice
<http://www.hancockcountydeeds.com/search.htm> regarding the new vendor
for the Hancock County Registry of Deeds, /Fidlar/
<http://www.fidlar.com/CompanyInfo.aspx>, and the webinars that took
place last week, you may be interested in learning of the in-person
training sessions that are scheduled for */Monday November 13, 2017
after 2PM, all day Tuesday November 14, 2017, and the morning of
Wednesday November 15, 2017/* when Andy Horsfall, Territory Manager for
Fidlar, will conduct workshops and answer questions regarding the stand
alone desktop application Loredo <http://www.fidlar.com/Laredo.aspx>
used by professional records researchers. Loredo looks quite promising
and comes in both a desktop version of the program, and a mobile
version, though I'm uncertain how deeply Andy will be getting into
Loredo's mobile app during his training sessions at the Registry of
Deeds offices at 50 State Street in Ellsworth.
Last Friday I was able to schedule time to be in attendance for one of
the webinars and heard participants comment on some of their objections
to the interface. Below is the email that I sent to Andy Horsfall
yesterday morning in response to his email below (read from the bottom
up) wherein I've tried to articulate and illustrate what I understood to
be some consensus of the opinions concerning the Loredo desktop
application that were expressed by all of the participants.
Consider blocking out some time to attend one of these workshops on the
these dates if you do deed research in Hancock County, and please let
Fidlar known any "/suggestions for future development to improve the
user experience/".
Kind regards,
Kelly
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy,
_*Subdivisions*_ /are not/ _*Towns*_
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System>I understand
Fidlar has developed Loredo for use in the western states and are
primarily concerned with terms associated with the Public Lands Survey
System (PLSS) and the vast majority of the United States that operate
under it. However, the Colonial States operate under a loosely organized
system of /metes and bounds/, and not a /rectangular system/ from where
the term "subdivision" in Loredo's lexicon emerges.
Furthermore, the terms: /village, town, township, plantation,/ and
/unorganized town/, have unique meanings predicated on the same early
evolutionary development of land records systems in the colonial states.
All of these terms have retained their respective particular meanings
into the present-day land records for these colonial states, Maine
included. These terms, some of which exist in PLSS states, have
different regional meanings; for example, an Iowa township implies 640
acres, then come sectional subdivisions, 1/2 section, 1/4 section, etc.
The physical location of a place, and even a parcel's size, can be
discerned in the PLSS state much more accurately and quickly than than
in the colonial states. Here in Hancock County
<https://co.hancock.me.us/site/index.php/general-information> there is
one city, dozens of towns (both organized towns, often known as
municipalities, and unorganized towns) and many villages
<https://co.hancock.me.us/site/index.php/hancock-county-villages>. The
term "town" is one of the fields in the search results that the
researcher closely scrutinizes.
Maine Law defines
<http://legislature.maine.gov/legis/statutes/30-A/title30-Asec4401.html>
the term "/subdivision/" and has it codified in many sections of the
Maine's statutes. The term subdivision is not an arbitrary term in Maine
law. Subdivision is also a specific /document type/ that has been
indexed and used for many, many years throughout the state of Maine in
its land resords, not just in Hancock County.
All of this is why you heard such an uproar yesterday morning during the
webinar over the Loredo application's misuse of the term subdivision,
its failure to clearly indicate town, and the confusion over Loredo's
use of the term location as representing a book instead of a geophysical
place. Just as subdivisions are not towns, book and page references do
not represent location.
*Researchers Don't Use Doc Numbers*
The other aspect of the webinar that met with raised eyebrows and
repeated comments was the widespread use of document numbers, both in
terms of Loredo's search criteria and its search results. While the
/document number/ may be vital to the internal workings of Loredo's
software, this is never a field that the researcher uses. Even though in
current times, when the actual physical printing of deed books haven't
taken place for a dozen years or so (at least here in Hancock County),
the /book and page/ for a specific recorded document remains the defacto
standard for document identification throughout many and varied
industries including title abstracting, court systems, surveying,
engineering, etc.
*
Search Results*
After some study of the v8 Release Notes
<http://www.fidlar.com/laredo/Laredo_Desktop_V8_ReleaseNotes.pdf> and
the Loredo Manual <http://www.fidlar.com/laredo/Laredo_Manual.pdf> and
after the webinar yesterday, it wasn't clear if what we discussed during
the webinar in terms of customizing the tabular layout of the search
results screen could be saved as a default setting, for example using a
/template /or/saved preferences/, that would automatically be used each
time the researcher launched Loredo.
Below, I've tried to illustrate what I understood as the consensus of
the webinar participants in so far as what they would expect to see in
the search results. Note in particular that the Loredo fields "Party"
and "Party Two" were renamed for both regional custom, clarity, and to
be more generally concise. The use of "party of the first" and "party of
the second part" may be common in locations of the country, but is not
frequently seen in Hancock County. Grantee and Grantor are the standard
terms and fields that are used for searches.
*Printing and File Naming*
During the webinar yesterday, we weren't able to actually see you use
the print functions of Loredo; e.g., format options, how to Set/ or use
the Printer Reset Tool, and how to email, and how to save a document to
our local computer. However, and as previously discussed during the
webinar, there is a problem introduced through the use of the Doc Number
instead of the Book and Page. Below, I've tried to illustrate one
possible location in the Print Options Dialog where 1) the Book and Page
information could be clearly presented to the user and 2) a check box
for the much needed feature to have the Book and Page printed in the
margin and on the face of each page of the document. The need for
marginal identification arises due to the fact that many thousands of
(possibly a million) pages only have printed on their face their page
number alone with no indication to which book they belong. Several
vendors ago, they offered the excellent feature of printing the Book and
Page in the margin.
Also, I may not have communicated the question clearly enough about file
naming schema. When printing a document to a system printer, such as
Microsoft to PDF:
The user will be prompted where to save the PDF and by what name to save
it. This is another are of great concern and one in which the current
vendor (Kofile) has really dropped the ball. Before Kofile acquired
Property Info, Property Info had a very logical schema in the naming of
the file being save. Kofile abandoned the logical schema in favor of
obfuscation through the use of some arcane combination of document
number co-mingled and hyphenated with a meaningless numeric string:
From the outset of the save file dialog, the default name for the file
being save should be predicated upon Doc Type, Book and Page, and the
number of pages in the multi-page PDF:
The other email that you mentioned accidentally moving/ deleting was
originally sent to you at 20171110 15:13 ET with the subject line: *User
Name and Password* and appears pasted below.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Andy,
It appears that user names default to all upper case. I trust this is
not the rule for the passwords - please affirm what rules apply to
password creation for Loredo. I'd prefer to have a randomly generated
<https://passwordsgenerator.net/> password assigned for my various
employees which is secure, such as: *gMrL;#2='MZHTMA;*
Also, I'm curious; what happens when they forget the password? There
doesn't appear to be any means in the Loredo interface for the
researcher to retrieve their lost password. Neither the v8 Release Notes
<http://www.fidlar.com/laredo/Laredo_Desktop_V8_ReleaseNotes.pdf>, nor
the Loredo Manual <http://www.fidlar.com/laredo/Laredo_Manual.pdf> speak
to this.
Thank you very much.
Kind regards,
Kelly
--
Mr. V. Kelly Bellis, ME PLS 2099 :: WQTS485
17 Union Street :: Ellsworth, ME 04605
http://aerial.panocea.us :: 1+ (207) 667-6912
------------------------------------------------------------------------
While I understand that the there are no plans to revise the Loredo
application, it is my fervent hope that Fidlar is interested enough in
working with Hancock County and in making Loredo better fit our needs. I
look forward to working with Loredo's improved interface and in some
small way to help Fidlar make those improvements, in as much as I'm able
to articulate and illustrate our researchers needs.
Thank you very much.
Kind regards,
Kelly
--
<http://aerial.panocea.us/>
Mr. V. Kelly Bellis, ME PLS 2099 :: WQTS485
17 Union Street :: Ellsworth, ME 04605
http://aerial.panocea.us :: 1+ (207) 667-6912
On 11/11/2017 5:56 AM, Andy Horsfall wrote:
> Thank you, Kelly.
>
> I am happy to take suggestions for future development to improve the
> user experience. However, Fidlar does not have any plans to change
> the Laredo program at this time. The subdivision field used for towns
> will also remain with the word subdivision.
>
> You also sent me an email after this one that I moved, and cannot seem
> to find. Would you mind resending? I apologize as I do not know what
> the content was.
>
> Thank you,
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *
> ANDY HORSFALL*
> *Territory Manager
> *563-345-1293 <tel:563-345-1293> | Office
> 603-321-9456 <tel:603-321-9456> | Cell
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>
> <http://www.fidlar.com/>
>
> Search County Records Online with Tapestry! <http://www.landrecords.net/>
> Protect your most valuable investment with Property Fraud Alert!
> <http://www.propertyfraudalert.com/>
>
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