How does one know what is in the Document Collection? A very good question and it is nearly impossible to answer with certainty. For example any given envelope for a surname may contain:- Certificates from the GR0; Extracts of entries for the surname from a parish register; Transcripts of wills; Original documents such as marriage settlements; newspaper cuttings; small pedigrees. The whole collection is a lucky dip, in the sense that you need to read through everything to see if it is relevant to your research. The collection has grown up over the lifetime of the Society, and really is a mass of manuscript and typed information that cannot be bound into any meaningful form. Regrettably over the years when the collection was on open access, the papers have become disarranged and it is now impossible to determine quickly the correct sequence of the material (this is one reason why we now microfiche all new material added to the collection) It is one of many parts of the Society's material that needs proper categorisation and indexing, but it is a big job. But the adding of the list of surnames to the website was seen as a way of making people aware of what we hold, even if it is not recorded as well as we would like. As one of the regular counter volunteers in the Lower Library, I have seen many people overjoyed to find a reference to an ancestor which has filled a missing connection. Frank Hardy P.S. Loose, unidentified papers in our lost property that are unclaimed quickly are liable to be added to the Surname or Topographical Document Collections if we can see a suitable place to file them! .