Pondering this problem I have come up with several solutions, but none I like.  Maybe the great minds of the Listserv could offer some advice on a slow holiday season.  

This problem is for my "other hat" as supervisor of the county's land records office where deed and mortgage records are filed.  From 1970 to 1986 a two-part 5x8" index card was made for every document filed.  The back copy was used for our legal description indexers and discarded after use; the front card was kept as a permanent record to show when and where the original document was mailed back.  Averaging 20,000 filings a year, we now have 10 cabinets, 56 drawers total, of probably 300,000 or more cards.  (Newer records are in our AS/400 computer system.)  The cabinets are in the way and we are trying to figure out what to do with their contents.  

Twenty or more years later these cards are rarely accessed, but needed quickly when required.  The title research business has an "I need it now" mentality, because waiting for information can keep the researcher from doing other work.  We also periodically get walk-in customers who want this information.  Having them wait for an hour or so is poor policy, too.  Here are the solutions I've come up with so far:
  a.. Box them all up and send them to our offsite storage contractor.  This is the simplest and probably cheapest method.  But my concern is retrieval time.  If we needed the info off a single card, just having the storage vendor find it and call us back could take a while, even in ideal conditions.  Will our customers be willing to wait?  
  b.. Photocopy them, 3 to a page, double sided, dispose of the originals and store the paper copies onsite.  This would take up much less space than the cabinets, we could use our standard storage boxes and they would be readily available, but the job would be very labor-intensive.  
  c.. Microfilm them.  This would take up less space than paper copies and last much longer.  But we don't have a microfilm reader, so it would be hard to justify the cost of one for just these records.  (I have tried for 3 years to no avail to get my boss to get microfilm backups of our image-only deed records, but that's another story.)  
  d.. Scan them onto CD's or DVD's.  This would take up even less space and provide faster access if they are indexed properly, but then you have to worry about cost and migration issues for little-used records.  
One other problem with any method of copying these is the color of the cards.  The deed cards are white, but the mortgage cards are several shades of green.  I don't know how well they would copy.  

Anybody have any ideas?  A better solution I haven't thought of yet?  Thanks!  

Tim Barnard, Records Management Clerk
Harrison County, Mississippi
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Phone (228) 865-4121 Fax (228) 865-4140

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