Good Morning Folks, Do we sometimes wonder why our access to records are being taken away? Well, let me explain. The Rutherford County, NC has two rooms for the Register of Deeds Office. One has the newer records in it with all the working personnel. In the other room is all the older records with open access with no supervision. I have grumbled before about people like you and me, researchers, unshelving books and never putting them up. Today I was in there making photos of the pages in a Deed Book when I found that two pages in the book had been ripped out. In the next room is a copy machine that can be used to make copies for a dime a piece. These Deed Books are our oldest and the NC State Archives made these hand written copies of the old deeds that were placed in the NC Archives. The pages were laminated so they would last almos forever. So now rather than make a copy we rip out the pages, just great! This is the deed that was ripped out "Johnston, James / Johnston, John / Deed/E-I/34! 1/1789" I know that we have all seen people doing things in the Register of Deeds Offices across the state that were not "just right" and didn't say anything to them. We need to start saying something and kind of policing ourselves or we are going to eventually lose our free access to these public records. OK, I have that "off my chest" now so Thank You, Bill