On May 25 2018, the APAPA Ohio Columbus Youth visited the Franklin County Recorder’s office in downtown Columbus.
At 2:00 PM, approximately 20 people, mostly youth, as well as a couple parents, gathered near the security checkpoint of the building and were met by County Recorder’s office HR director Eric Sells.
In summer of 2018, APAPA Ohio is having its inaugural internship program, where API youth will intern at various legislator and government offices, to gain real life experience on how government works. Franklin County Recorder’s office is one of them, and Mr. Sells is instrumental in working with APAPA Ohio in establishing the internship program. Two of the APAPA youth will be spending 6 weeks and a more minimum of 120 hours as an intern, gaining real life experience.
Mr. Sells explained to the group that the county recorder office is responsible for recording, preserving, protecting and retrieving real estate, personal property, and other records. These important records include real estate transaction filings, living wills, and veteran military discharge documents. The recorder ‘s office also safeguards the property interest of the public, and makes the records available at any time, and can be accessed online and with the help of an employee.

During the tour, the group was shown both floors occupied by the office. It was fascinating to see that the office had many large bookcases, lined with heavy large books filled with information, sorted by year. These books hold real estate transaction fillings from as early as about 200 years ago. While at first the system may seem daunting, it is neatly organized, and records can be found in a reasonable amount of time. While storing information in books may seem “old school”, Mr. Sells explained that with the amount of information that was stored in books, it would be a costly, as well as time consuming, process to transfer all material in the books to online databases. Additionally, online resources cannot be depended on all the time, such as in the case of a power outage, or internet crash. And even more to the youths surprise, some records were even stored on microfilm! Some members of the group were so young, that they did not recognize that method for storing information.
Current incumbent County Recorder is Daniel O’Connor. He is running for the August 7th special election in Ohio's 12th Congressional District. Unfortunately he was not in the office during our visit.
Many youth and parents alike found the tour informative and interesting. Government offices no longer exists as an abstract and redundant bureaucracy outpost. As part of the nuts and bolts of the gigantic government machinery, the recorder’s office is an integral and important part of the Ohio state government.
More photos from the visit:

###
【编者按】本文仅代表作者观点，不代表APAPA Ohio及OCAA官方立场。更多精彩文章，请点击“阅读原文”查看我们公众号的主页。欢迎大家积极投稿！
【APAPA俄州青年团作品】
  1. 政治并不枯燥：亲历APAPA俄亥俄夏季实习培训之二
  2. 第一次经历美国选举系统 - 沃伦郡选举委员会之旅
  3. My Experience: APAPA Ohio 2018 Summer Internship Training
  4. 一次独特的春假行 — 参观选举委员会
  5. Enough is Enough: HB Walkout
  6. 让我们一起跑起来 － 记颜希诚先生公益讲座
  7. APAPA俄亥俄青年选举成立哥伦布分部
  8. 2017亚裔峰会给我的体验
  9. 超越自我（Beyond Our Boundaries）
  10. 拥抱我们的差异
  11. 我的难忘经历 – 参加Beyond Our Boundaries青年峰会
以下为OCAA重要赞助商，请长按二维码进入产品网站，使用“OHCA“优惠代码获取10%折扣。
关于APAPA Ohio 公众号
APAPA Ohio公众号是APAPA Ohio在俄亥俄华人协会(OCAA)的支持下办的公众号，旨在为俄亥俄的亚裔群体、尤其是华人群体提供一个分享、交流、互助的平台，宣传APAPA Ohio 、OCAA和其他亚裔团体的活动，促进亚裔社区对美国社会、政治、文化、教育、法律等的了解。APAPA的全名是Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association (美国亚太联盟)，是在美国联邦政府注册的501(c)(3)非营利组织，网址：OhioCAA.org。
继续阅读
阅读原文