Allan Carlson climbs a ladder, peers through a lens aimed at the pages of an oversize book and zeros in.

After turning on four hot, glaring lights pointed at the page, he’s ready to preserve history.

The strange contraption that photographs the pages and converts them into electronic images is the brainchild of county officials looking to make a cheaper, but effective, mousetrap.

The goal is to preserve books dating from the 1870s to 1950s that contain land-ownership records and maps. Over time, the books’ spines have broken down, their covers have been ripped and their pages have yellowed and faded.

The cost of the county’s contrivance was $1,700, a fraction of the $60,000 estimate if a contractor handled the job, impractical at a time of dwindling budgets.

“We were about $59,000 short,” El Paso County Assessor Mark Lowderman said.

That’s when he and county records manager Steve Veatch put their heads together and went shopping.

At a local camera store, they found a wood platform rigged with floodlights designed to – well – they’re not sure. They added a top-mounted digital camera, hooked it to a television screen and computer, and – voila! – an “alternative solution.”

“I thought, ‘There’s no way this is going to work,'” Lowderman said.

For the past year, Carlson has been taking pictures page by page, enhancing them with software and retaining them electronically.

Forced to wedge camera duty among his regular tasks of maintaining the office’s technology and equipment, Carlson has worked his way through only one volume and parts of three others of the 58 that need to be duplicated.

But speed isn’t the issue. Preservation is.

“The old archival books are deteriorating just from use,” Lowderman said. “They’re wearing out.”

Unlike the digital age of downloading, once the old books fall apart, that’s it. There’s no backup.

The books, which measure nearly 2 feet long, 19 inches wide and 5 inches thick, are shelved behind a heavy, fireproof door in Room 217, the vault, where college students, title researchers and environmental investigators pore over the pages.

The new electronic version will be accessible on a network at the Assessor’s Office, and, perhaps someday, online. But placing them on the Web will require server space. One volume occupies a gigabyte of storage, nearly twice the space used by all the county’s 260,000 property-assessment files.

One reason is that the pages are being retained in color. “It’s nice to see the patina of the very old paper,” Carlson said, not to mention the different colors of ink.

The electronic images are superior to the originals because they can be enlarged to reveal detail – who bought what piece of land in the Parrish Addition, for example.

While state statutes require some records be retained, Lowderman said the project is driven more by a sense of legacy.

“This is the history of Colorado Springs and El Paso County,” he said.

Turning a page, snapping the image, turning a page, snapping the image.

“It would be a good thing to do if you have trouble sleeping,” Lowderman said.

Carlson was the perfect person for the job because of his interest in photography and his patience. The project won’t be done until 2010.

Though it’s tedious work, the makeshift gadget’s value can be measured in demand.

“As soon as we finish with it,” he said, “there’s a waiting list.”

Seems the treasurer, clerk and recorder and sheriff want to put it to work.

“If nothing else, we’re creative,” Lowderman said.

Sarah Middlebrook, 9, showed off a container full of things beginning with the letter O during class Monday. Teacher Jennifer Nerren is seen in the background. Photo by MARK REIS, THE GAZETTE