ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 3

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

January 17, 1957
To THE HONORABLE

THE HALL OF RECORDS COMMISSION

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
Gentlemen:

It is with genuine satisfaction that the Archivist transmits to you this
report of the activities of the Hall of Records for the fiscal year 1956, that
is July 1, 1955 through June 30, 1956. It is his hope that after examining this
account you will find his satisfaction to be justified. None of the desiderata
for a good year were lacking: there were no changes in the membership of
the Hall of Records Commission and hardly any in the staff, so that we could
not have asked for better auspices. Moreover, we were well, if not lavishly,
furnished with the funds which we needed for efficient operation. Again, the
General Assembly approved of two measures which we badly needed to clarify
and further our usefulness. One Act provided for the orderly disposition of
the records of agencies of government which ceased to function and the other
permitted fuller development of our records disposal program by authorizing
the destruction of certain records—hitherto especially prohibited—after
microfilming.

We were unfortunate only in the extraordinary amount of time which
was lost due to illness; but in spite of this, production in every archival activi-
ty which can be statistically measured remained approximately the same as
the year before. Binding was exactly the same, repairing a little better; in
photography we did less microfilming but more photostating; we circulated
fewer documents to a smaller number of searchers, but we wrote more letters
to a larger number. Our accessions were not so great quantitatively as they
have been for some years in the past, but we have never received more valuable
or more difficult records to handle than the fine collection of early church and
court records which you will find listed herein.

Especially gratifying was the steady development of the Records Man-
agement Program. By the end of the year, we had not only made good progress
in the State agencies, we had also begun an intensive program of ordering the
records in our county courthouses. As you are aware, part of this county pro-
gram calls for the preparation of insurance microfilm copies of all the import-
ant land and probate series in the counties and in Baltimore City, We had
already finished the great probate series of Wills and Orphans' Court Proceed-