I fully understand what you, Lisa, were saying in your original post.  It is good to have this message board so that we can talk to each other, find out how title searching and record keeping differs from state to state.  North Carolina's registries are governed by state statutes and standard rules for all 101 counties however when an abstractor searches numerous counties here, we have to know the history of each registry to be skilled and know how to search that particular county.  For example, my home county has always recorded assignments under the grantor's name as well as under the lender's name.  One county that I also search hides the assignments from us and until about seven years ago they would do a hit and miss type of recording, that is if they felt like recording them they did.  In 1999, I would get requests from document retrieval companies across the country that would tell me that they know this county never records the assignments so they expected to get the no finds that I would give them.  This is why all the listings from other states in the SOT directory in my particular county can not adequately do a title search here even though the documents are online.  Our capital's registry is online and requires a security code to search their documents.  I could do searches in that county on line if I felt like getting a security code, however, I have never been in that registry, I don't know the subdivisions or the layout of the land.  I have lived and worked in Raleigh in my younger days but I have no personal history searching that part of the state.   It would be unethical for me to provide a product to someone saying that I have done a marketable search for them.

When I moved to SC, I gave up my independent status and worked for an attorney for two years until I became comfortable and more knowledgeable of the county.  That county was not computerized.  The skills of searching books I had.  That part of searching seems to be the same technique from county to county, state to state.  That part is like riding a bicycle.  However, the other skills of knowing the history of the lands, knowing how the registry indexes, where to look, and where they put things is a learned skill.  That part is like knowing where the safest place is to ride the bicycle. 

As to your statement about no county recorder's (registry) office is totally on the computer, well ours is.  When that server goes down we are paralyzed until it comes back up.  We do worry about the thing crashing and how it would affect us.  However, the current Registrar and the County officials seem to be confident that that will not happen.  I have studied the computer system that our county uses and I do feel that they are a reputable company.  I don't like the computer systems of several other counties that I have searched, nor the company that serves them.

We do have a backup system.  Also, the NC State Archives Dept. maintains backups for each 101 counties whether they are computerized or hard copy.  They always have.  But they are kept who knows where for security reasons and we can not get to them.  I am sure a lot if not all states do that.

Remember the original post was to condemn the searchers that use the online computer systems to do title searches as opposed to physically searching in the courthouse.  I don't know if you were meaning by physically searching in the courthouse as searching volumes of books. I was just explaining that we have to search a computer in the registry too.  However,  I would condemn anyone that searches
on line if they are not living in the area that they are searching because they are not familiar with the area.