Many people are not aware that hosts of county and state records have been microfilmed and are available for loan.  This section should be of interest to anyone believing they have "covered all the records" and still not found the answers they seek.

Microfilm is available for loan to any public or private library that provides interlibrary loan services. 

Most of the microfilm was obtained by the Archives & Information Services Division through agreement with the Genealogical Society of Utah. From the beginning of the agreement, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, resolved to make the film available through interlibrary loan to researchers throughout the country.

These county records are available from Midwestern State University. Complete address and contact information are below:

RULES GOVERNING THE INTERLIBRARY LOAN OF MICROFILM

The loan of county records microfilm is subject to the following policies. These policies are implemented to ensure the availability of the film to researchers on a timely basis and to protect certain rights vested by law in the custodians of the original records.

• Microfilm reels of local records are available for loan to libraries, not to individuals. Contact your local library to arrange an interlibrary loan of the materials you wish to view.
• No more than five (5) reels of microfilm may be on loan to the same researcher at the same time.
• Microfilm is loaned for a fourteen day period, but the period may be extended for an additional fourteen days if no other request for the microfilm has been received.
• The Texas State Library, a regional historical resource depository, and requesting institutions are not permitted to provide certified copies of documents on microfilm. If a certified copy is needed, the researcher should obtain it from the county clerk or district clerk who is custodian of the original record. The current custodian of the records of the county superintendents of schools is the county clerk.
• The microfilm is for in-library use only. Under no circumstances is it to be removed by the researcher from the premises of the requesting institution.

NOTE :  Although great care was taken to get the best picture from each record, those best efforts did not always result in microfilm that is easy to read. Some records are in such poor condition that producing high-quality microfilm images of them was very difficult. Especially troublesome were records created in the nineteenth century using iron-based inks. Over the years the iron-based inks have chipped away, leaving behind a faint reddish-brown "ghost" script that is extremely difficult to read. When the writing was done on blue paper, as it often was because of the popularity of that color with nineteenth century paper manufacturers, the document is now often illegible or nearly so, even to the naked eye.

ALSO NOTE :  In some counties, record books have been rebound in a manner that prevents them from being opened fully, making capture of a legible image of an entire page difficult. Researchers should attempt to see the original document in those instances in which the quality of the microfilm is poor.