In Vermont, our land records are held by town.  There are 251 separate sets of land records for a state with a population of about 600,000!  Each town clerk is allowed, within very broad statutes, to index her land records as she sees fit.  Some town clerks are still hand-writing general indexes, although Vermont case law says we really ought to be using the index in each individual book (hah!). Some clerks have gone to a user-unfriendly but state-okayed computerized indexing. Computerized indexing is available to abstractors in the town clerk's office as a hard copy or (rarely) on a read-only computer.  None of these records are online.  One town clerk has recently purchased the software to put both  her indexes and her documents online.  She is having a seminar Tuesday to explain the system and, I presume, her rationale for opening her "public" records to the world.  I'll keep you posted on developments. =Anne=