Abuse, inattention, neglect threaten county's archives

It's a shame Craighead County circuit clerks have allowed the county's bound record volumes — some dating back to statehood — to fall into such a state of disrepair and disorganization. The large books, which detail land surveys, court cases, tax records and other important historical information, are literally falling apart due to abuse, inattention and neglect.

People have been allowed to walk in off the street and go through the books without adequate supervision. Pages have been ripped out and many of the volumes are literally falling apart due to age and careless handling.

The situation is so dire, some are held together with duct tape and string.

Stored haphazardly at the courthouses in Jonesboro and Lake City, the volumes at both locations are kept in random sections and different rooms with no organization. Quite frankly, it's a huge mess.

So how did it get so bad?

That's on the circuit clerks, who are the official custodians of the records. They've apparently ignored their care for decades.

The situation has become so desperate, the president of a Jonesboro title company started voicing his concerns to Circuit Clerk Candice Edwards, who has held the office since January 2015.

Seeing the light, Edwards is hoping to remedy the troubling situation.

"We had a researcher who needed to research some farmland back to statehood in one of the books," Edwards told Sun reporter Pat Pratt. "Because it was such a massive job, the president of the title company helped him, and when he saw the status of these books, he was just mortified."

Steve May, president of Professional Title Services of Arkansas, said the books are not only important to preserve historical records, but the absence of those records would make it impossible for title companies to do their jobs.

"It is very hard for us to do our jobs if the public land records are not maintained properly," May told Pratt. "If the books are deteriorating and falling apart and the documents inside are falling apart, we are going to begin, over time, losing that history."

May is so concerned he's willing to make a donation to the county to move forward with a restoration project.

We applaud his initiative.

May is hoping the other three title companies in the area will do the same and that the county will help fund the project.

It won't be cheap.

Restoring a single volume could cost upwards of $1,000. Between both courthouses, there are hundreds of books.

You can do the math.

But that's what happens when basic services are neglected for years. Circuit clerks should have been restoring several books on an annual basis, budgeting for their maintenance and organization. Now, the project is almost too big of a mess to remedy.

Of course, spending tens of thousands of dollars restoring the bound volumes will do absolutely no good if better controls aren't put in place for their storage and care.

The first order of business should be to get

the books organized, their condition noted and then stored in one central, climate-controlled location where their use is monitored. No one should be able to walk in off the street and start going though the books willy-nilly. They should be checked out, one at a time, like at a library. Their use should be in a designated area under video surveillance to ensure their care.

The volumes are public records and should be treated as such, with respect and care.

Most counties across the country maintain similar archives, but in controlled settings and with money budgeted annually for their maintenance.

That's what Craighead County needs to do before important history of our county is forever lost.