ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 45

property. When a lender or seller (secured party) desires to perfect his
interest in such a transaction, he can do so by having a Financing
Statement recorded by the Clerk's office.

Under the Code, a Financing Statement is effective for only five
years. However, a Continuation Statement may be filed which continues
its effectiveness for an additional five years. Since this might cause dif-
ficulty in disposing of these records, we were particularly anxious that
they be recorded and indexed throughout the State in such a way that
they could be readily destroyed when no longer effective. Fortunately,
the Committee was as concerned about this as were we, and procedures
were adopted which will make this possible.

In other aspects of our work, emphasis was placed upon reducing
the quantity of non-current records retained in the offices and store-
rooms of State agencies, in order to lower maintenance costs and to
improve control over the records. As a result, 3,822 cubic feet of
records were transferred to the Records Centers in Baltimore and in
Annapolis. This transfer not only released equipment for re-use but
contributed to more efficient office operation.

With the increased volume of records housed in the Centers, addi-
tional time was required to service them. This service includes shelving
the records, maintaining the necessary control forms, providing refer-
ence to the records, microfilming records to be preserved on film, and
supervising their destruction. As our Records Center holdings increase,
use of the records also increases. In the course of the year, 3,712 re-
quests were received for records units or information from records in
the two Centers.

Reduction in the bulk of records through the substitution of micro-
film copies for the originals remains an important part of our program.
This year, 1,816,158 exposures were made for ten State agencies. The
records microfilmed and retired, as well as those destroyed without
filming from the Records Centers or from State or local agencies
amounted to 9,973 cubic feet. As in the past, we disposed of these un-
needed records to various waste paper companies on a contractual basis.
This year, the State received $4,087.28 from this source, of which
$1,670.54 was returned to the general funds of the State. The remain-
der went to the Department of Employment Security, which operates
entirely on federal funds.