A town clerk shall procure and keep a book of records for mortgages of personal property and shall keep an alphabetical index of mortgagors and mortgagees. The record and index shall be open to public inspection. The clerk shall record in the book any mortgage, transfer, discharge, or officer's return of sale upon any mortgage. Reference to the volume and page of the record of the mortgage shall be made by the clerk upon the margin of the record of the return, as well as reference on the margin of the record of the mortgage to the volume and page of the record of the return. When requested, the clerk shall give a certified copy thereof on payment of his or her fees as provided in 32 V.S.A. § 1671 and shall certify the time when the same is received and recorded. Mortgages or deeds of trust conveying both real and personal property shall be recorded only as real estate mortgages, but town clerks shall include in their indices of mortgages of personal property a reference to the record thereof. A copy of the personal mortgage, certified as a true and correct copy by the recording clerk, may be pasted or otherwise permanently attached in the record books, provided that space on the back of the sheet to be pasted is allowed for pasting, and when so done the same shall be deemed to be legally recorded, or if a person leaving the mortgage for record so desires, it shall be copied into the records at length by the town clerk. (Amended 1969, No. 40, § 2, eff. April 4, 1969.)