From PBS:
Storing paper records in the attic of a police station might sound like a practice from the distant past, but that's what I learned happens in at least one rural North Carolina county. In fact, good old-fashioned paper copies of public records are still common in rural parts of North Carolina.
Part of our job here at the OpenRural project at UNC is to somehow get that paper out of the attic and onto the web, and do it in a way that's financially sustainable for the staff of small papers.
The driving force behind the creation of digital records isn't an interest in making public information widely available, but the ease of filing monthly data to the State Bureau of Investigation and sharing information with other agencies.