A faint, musky smell lingers in the air as Bill Hanna works hisway through the “dungeon.”

Volumes of old records surround the historian while he maneuversthrough the storage room in the chancery clerk’s office at theBrookhaven-Lincoln County Government Complex. Armed with his bowlof bright orange paint, Hanna is deciding what records stay andwhich ones go.

“I’m marking everything that’s ready to be destroyed,” the stateDepartment of Archives and History Director of County Governmentrecords says as a dollop of paint hits another record.

One day last week, Hanna made his 10th visit to Lincoln Countywithin the last year to inventory the county’s records. He travelsto the state’s 82 counties working with county officials on theirrecord-keeping practices.

“Guidelines determine how long they’re supposed to keep them,”Hanna said. “Prior to 1996, there really wasn’t any guidelines –or very few.”

Hanna says there is no average length of how long something mustbe maintained. Some records, like routine financial documents, canbe disposed of as quickly as three years after an audit has beendone.

“Some of these are permanent, like land deeds. Those thingswould never be thrown away,” Hanna said.

Generally, Hanna says, if a record is valuable but theinformation is also found elsewhere, then the document can bedestroyed. Hanna says a county’s general ledger of financialrecords, which summarizes a variety of transactions, must bekept.

“The general ledger is one of a few financial records that arepermanent,” Hanna said.

In Lincoln County, Hanna says there are a number of documentsthat go back to the 19th Century. Those records must be keptbecause nothing before 1920 can be destroyed, he says.

“Part of that is because of the scarcity of the records,” Hannasaid, adding that though the information may be trivial, it givessome idea about the culture of the times.

Newspapers are other documents that must be kept.

“The newspaper is a wonderful record of a community,” Hannasays, while also mentioning microfilm as a storage method. “Wewould never want a county to not keep the newspaper ormicrofilm.”

For documents between 1920-1940, Hanna says he looks closely atthem before deciding their fate. Anything after 1940 can bediscarded under Archives and History’s guidelines.

“It depends on the type of record,” Hanna says. “They look veryhard at making sure nothing having significant historical value isdestroyed.”

Hanna acknowledges also that the department is conscious of theamount of storage space required for keeping records. That is inpart what brought Hanna to Lincoln County, says Chancery ClerkTillmon Bishop.

“We work in a public house and we’re quickly finding that we’recramped for space,” Bishop says.

So far, Hanna says about 35 percent of what he’s seen can bedisposed. Twenty-eight percent must be kept and decisions on about24 percent, mostly court records, are pending.

“A lot of those will be permanent because of the nature of therecords,” Hanna said, explaining that court-related documents arepermanent.

Another 13 percent will need to be reviewed further, Hannasays.

With the space freed up by the removed records, Bishop says heintends to ask to board of supervisors to renovate the area andallow it be used by the county tax office. The remaining recordswill be arranged in an orderly manner, he says.

Hanna and Bishop expected record removal to begin in a fewweeks. For the items to be discarded, Bishop says he hopes to finda temporary location to store them, in case citizens areinterested, until they are eventually disposed of.

“It’s not our intention to dispose of anything of historicalvalue,” Bishop said. “We’re taking extra precautions to not dothat.”