OK.  Here's my question - so, do you all, who have to pay horrendous copy costs, abstract by hand?

When I started doing this in 1975 there simply weren't any photocopiers in the registries - so all abstracting was done by hand, either onto preprinted forms, or in the case of my office, on plain paper.  As I remember, we also traced plans by hand as well.  Producing an abstract of title took several days time because of the labor involved in copying documents by hand.   Even when copiers appeared in the registries there were offices that were reluctant to use them, partly because of the cost & partly because there was a sense that hand abstracting was a skill set that needed to be preserved.  

Here's what we get in Massachusetts.  In Essex( North) county  free online documents go back to the 1860's.  All the plans are online.  Registered Land certificates of title are online, along with all those documents & plans.  Indices are online as well.  The Registry scanned all the bound indices, so you can sit home & do a title without the necessity of going to the Registry.  Of course, there are glitches (some serious) with the scanning of the indices, so you need to keep count of the page numbers, but otherwise it's pretty much all there.  The same is mostly true for other Registries as well.  In Connecticut & NY are the Registries at Town Halls or are they part of a a county wide system? If they're part of a town system, then I can see the reason for the copy charges.   The only Registry that I'm familiar with that charges all outdoors for copies is in Dedham & even there they let you bring in a scanner & copy docs onto your scanner for free.