It is very important that researchers do their homework before visiting the archives. www.mdsa.net is the website for the archives. If you visit the archives, this is the same website you will see to request records. So it is best to know what you want before you visit. Otherwise you will waste a lot of time at the Archives trying to decide what to request. If you are looking for State, County, Municipal records (paper, microfilm, or digital), they can be found at this link. http://guide.mdsa.net/ Click on all the links to see what they have for your county. The records referred to as Transferred indicated archives staff haven't completed the process to fully describe the contents. Due to funding many of these records labelled as Transferred have remained under the Tranferred title for many many years. For each record, the question will remain what type of information is contained in the record and is the record indexed. In some cases you will not know until you request the record an take a look at it (microfilm, digital, or paper). The types of records available will vary somewhat by county. I have tried to take a small snapshot of Dorchester County by providing the contents of certain types of records on my "in progress" East New Market, MD website. www.eastnewmarket.org Click on the links for Tax Records, Court Records, and Probate records for examples of these types of records. I would recommend researching land records online at www.mdlandrec.net and researching Government Acts at http://aomol.net/html/index.html rather than visiting the Archives. Some workers at the archives are volunteers/interns and probably many are underpaid for the valuable work they do. I have found all the people at the help desk to be very helpful, especially Robert Barnes. The staff may sometime appear to be crabby when certain people are making unrealistic demands of them. They are not going to do your research for you. I have found that a smile and thank you goes a long way with the staff at the info desk. Maryland residents should contact their state representatives to request more funding for the archives. Frank