I've been file diving at the county recorder's office for the past few weeks, searching mining claim records going back to the late 1800s. Prior to 1915, everything is handwritten in cursive. Curse the folks with loopy handwriting where every letter looks the same. One recorder managed to make the word westerly indecipherable from easterly. In this case, it was kind of important information. I could only read for a couple hours a day as the eyestrain of reading cursive on a cheap monitor is horrible. The records were scanned from microfiche.
Also, the job of county recorder used to suck, hard. They hand wrote everything back then. People would dictate what they wanted recorded and the recorder had to write it all down. Scribbling all day long, day after day. I ran across mining claim records where the claimant had recorded 39 claims at one time. The recorder wrote thirty pages. The claimant f'ed it up twice so the recorder ended up writing out ninety pages for this one guy. With the mining claims, the recorders didn't use a new sheet of paper for each claim. They would finish one claim, draw a line, and start writing out the next claim. It makes searching a pain in the ass as the recorder's office hasn't indexed the historical claims. I don't blame them as the utility of doing so is pretty low but it would make my life better if they did.