Well geez BUT, depending on your state and your county many of these are housed in different buildings, etc.  If I have to get a plat I have to get a plat card from drawers and drawers and drawers of plat cards and then there are the ones on the top of the cabinets that people don't file back and were suppose to (many times they are not in the plat drawer) and go and have someone in another office run it off the plat machine and then I have to file the plat cards back in order in a huge mess of plat drawers - we do have 3 Million people in Dallas county - if I get a tax map I have to go to another floor of the building and get a key to open the hard covered books up and then wait on a clerk to make 2 separate copies to make the page and we have to tape them together.  So I guess in my state it is a big deal.  I'm always telling everyone that don't always assume it is as easy somewhere else as it may be in your state.  Additionally, our plats are 17 x 24 - can't fax those - some of the newer ones are on the computer and can be printed but many can't be read at that size.  In my state and counties a retrieval fee would be in order on top of the current owner search fee.  It is very time consuming where I am and if I had to go read one everytime before I did a current owner search, I wouldn't get anything done.