By ADAM JACKSON
Tribune Staff Writer

NILES -- For years, when City Clerk Ruth Harte wanted to dig up a file, there was only one way. "I'd have to put on the old rubber finger and go through the filing cabinets," she said.
Harte still has all the information she needs at her fingertips, but all she needs to touch to access it is the button of a mouse. Niles is just one of several area municipalities and public bodies going to electronic filing, a procedure that allows rooms full of files to be condensed into the tiny magnetic disk of a computer's hard drive. And riding the crest of that information organization wave is family-owned, Elkhart-based company Bolt Document Management.

Jeffand Catherine Nelson, who started up the business, found themselves looking for a
way to use their computer skills about three years ago. Since that time, what they have to offer has been creating a whole new way for municipal clerks to store mountains of information. And for some offices, a whole new way to let the public access it.

"We see customers going two different ways with this," JeffNelson said. "Some are'
asking for systems to organize in-house information, so it is more readily accessible to
employees." Others, however, are looking to get that information into the hands of citizens, a move that stands to considerably cut down on the traffic through city offices looking for
copies of documents like city council minutes and the like. And for those clients, there is DocItToMe.com -- a server at Bolt's Elkhart headquarters where clients can post any information they want to make available to the public for a fee.

"A lot of communities are starting their own Web sites, but they are mostly geared
toward promotion," Nelson said. "With this site, a community or agency can post the
available information, then add a link to their regular site." The service has already attracted the interest of clients like Mishawaka, Goshen and Elkhart, which already has some information up on the site. The newest addition will be Jefferson Township, since the Nelsons decided to offer the service to the township for free. "We live in Jefferson Township, and we wanted to be involved in the community," Nelson said. "The trouble was, we work in Elkhart, so we couldn't always make it to all of the meetings. "So, with this, we can look at the documents that were discussed, even if we couldn't make it there. It's as much ora benefit to us as it is for them."
Sound like a good thing? It appears to be. But it may soon be better.

Not one to stay content with the status quo, Nelson is already working on refinements to
the systems, both the server he administrates and the systems he sells to offices. One of
the most interesting is a push to make the information stored in the system accessible to
all users -- even if they don't speak English. "What the translator program does is take all of the documents scanned in and converts
th em to binary code -- computer language," Nelson said. "The program can then take
that language and translate it into the desired language."

To Dowagiac City Clerk James Snow, no matter what the language is, the system he
bought from Bolt makes great sense. In his 17 years as city clerk, he's put together a
filing system that he knows like the back of his hand. And thanks to the system he's bought from Bolt, that going to be a matter of simply putting the document on a scanner and hitting the button.

"It's going to simplify things tremendously," he said, noting that he became interested in
the system upon hearing a recommendation from Niles' Harte. "The retrieval of documents is going to faster than ever before," she said.