And yet in some parts of City Hall, the government is on its way to becoming one of the most open, transparent in the state, at least when it comes to public records.

The city clerk's office is scanning all sorts of documents - birth records, ordinances, and even the 1828 document that established the city - and putting them into a searchable computer database that will be available to residents, genealogists, history buffs and journalists.

"They are certainly well above the curve when it comes to the care and maintenance of records," said Sean Curry, who administers the state grant program that has provided a half-million dollars to Camden in the last four years.

"Records speak to the integrity of government. . . . This will allow the citizens of Camden to know their own government," he said.

Earlier this month, Camden received an annual grant allotment of $182,800, more than any other municipality in New Jersey, for a total of $500,585 in grants over four years.

And what's more, the city has assembled a coalition of 11 smaller Camden County towns to help them digitize their own documents. It even offers space on city computer servers to back up those documents.

So if Voorhees Town Hall collapses one day, all of the municipality's crucial documents will be stored at Camden City Hall.

"This is a very important thing to us," said Voorhees Township clerk Jeanette Schelberg. "Records are the heart of your organization, and particularly your local records. They're the closest to the people. It's very important that we get these records in order and maintained for future generations."

In addition to Camden, counties and municipalities throughout the state have received grants from the state Division of Archives and Records Management for preserving documents. Burlington, Camden and Gloucester Counties have each been awarded $3.6 million.

Last year, the state recognized Camden County for being the first to do an assessment of records in 34 of its 37 municipalities. That allowed all of those towns to apply for their own grant money.

The county is also creating a centralized storage facility open to all county towns, and a shared services arrangement to store Gloucester County's records might also be worked out, according to Maria Efstratiades, the Camden County director of the Office of Archives and Records Management.

But what makes Camden City unique is that it's a municipality - a municipality in perpetual financial crisis and under state monitoring - that is taking the lead in setting up the necessary software for use by so many other towns.

Schelberg said Camden had done a "magnificent" job, and Curry said Camden made one of the most comprehensive grant proposals statewide this year.

"The attention sometimes with the city of Camden is focused on the people issues and the political environment," said Luis Pastoriza, Camden's clerk. "And often times what is forgotten is the history of the municipality."

Bill Lutz, whom council named the city's first records manager earlier this month, described the project as a "portal for information."

The reasons for digitizing documents, even in a depressed economic environmen, are varied:

Money. Now to comply with public requests for records and discovery during legal cases, paid employees have to compile documents, redact sensitive information, and sometimes sit with someone who is reading the paperwork.

Space. As paperwork grows, space in municipal offices shrinks.

Protection. Electronic, off-site back-ups protect against theft, fire and terrorism.

Efficiency. Vendors will be able to see where a proposed bid is in a town's bureaucratic process.

History. Eventually, audio recordings of council meetings will be in the database. And local historians are excited about the possibility of having every death and birth record in Camden, which was once the population center of South Jersey.

So far, Camden has used the grant money to put copies of old council meeting minutes on microfilm, which is now stored in Trenton. A digital copy was also provided to the South Jersey Historical Society.

"If you can pick a date between now and 1828, I can get you the minutes," Pastoriza said.

Many other documents will be physically stored at a facility in Princeton, and there will be multiple computer backups on servers around the country.

Within six months, resolutions and ordinances from the last five years will be available on a public computer at City Hall. And within a year, they will be online.

But long-term details haven't all been worked out. It is unclear how much information will fit on the city's Web site, for example. And although paperwork that goes through the clerk's office will go online, it is not known whether other departments, like the police, will allow access to their documents.

Regardless, historians are thrilled.

"We see it as being a panacea," said Bob Thompson, a trustee of the Camden County Historical Society. "The history's there; now they can come looking for it."