Well, I have stayed out of this thread as long as I could.  My situation is a little different, since I wear two hats.  I am also in charge of the county office where deed and mortgage records are filed.  We have on an average day a dozen or more title researchers using these records, which date back to 1841.  

Until about 5 years ago mortgages normally ran 3-4 legal pages or 5-6 letter pages.  Now they are anywhere from 15 to 30 pages of legalese and attachments.  We began filling up books so fast that an imaging system went from convenience to necessity.  We scanned all the books back to 1985, when we started our computer indexes, and have been imaging documents directly into the system without books for the last 2 1/2 years.  

A title researcher needs to abstract the names, dates, terms and legal description from each mortgage and check for proper acknowledgement format.  Usually the names are on the first page, amount and terms on the second page and description on either the third page or an attachment near the end.  The signature page is somewhere near the end depending on the number of attachments.  Our imaging system displays only about half the page in a readable size, so one must not only "turn" pages but move them up and down to find the information needed.  Then a couple of companies want you to play "Where's Waldo" with the amount and terms, which they have buried somewhere near the signature page.  

Our books alternate between under-counter shelves and tall cabinet shelves, so there is always an adjacent counter to place a book.  While the retrieval time may be faster with a computer than walking back and forth between shelves, my personal experience is that it is easier and faster to glean the necessary information from the book than from the image.  Yet some of the researchers prefer to sit at the computers rather than pull books.  As others have said, it really depends on the situation.  

I remember a TV commercial from the 1970's where a faceless being carries a box to a pedestal.  It opens the front of the box and a head inside begins reciting complex math computations.  Pretty soon the head finishes and calls Z-12 to come take him back.  But Z-12 is nowhere to be found.  As I watch the reserachers sit at the computer stations all day instead of pulling books like before, I wonder how close to that we're getting.  

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

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