ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 51

providing room in the courthouse for the offices of the Clerks of Court
and the Registers of Wills, and the Comptroller must authorize the
use of fees collected by the officials for purchase of record equipment
and furniture, cooperation between county and State is essential. As
advisors to the Comptroller, our primary responsibility is to assist the
Clerk or Register in the layout of record areas and in the purchase of
appropriate equipment. Occasionally, however, the county also seeks
our advice on air conditioning and vault construction. During the
year, we assisted the Clerks and Registers in Caroline, Cecil, Harford
and Kent counties in planning for new office and records space.

The ever-increasing need for space and the rising costs of con-
struction have caused many county and State officials to realize that
the space problem cannot be solved by brick and mortar alone, but that
its solution lies in the re-design of current records systems. We have
long urged the Clerks to adopt a microfilm system of recording, and
we were instrumental in getting legislation in 1962 permitting them
to employ such systems. Although many of the Clerks and Registers
have for some time used a microfilm projection print program for
recording, and the Clerk of the Superior Court in Baltimore City and
the Clerk in Prince George's County have been recording Financing
Statements on microfilm only, most Clerks have been reluctant to adopt
such a system. However, a microfilm recording program for the land
records in Prince George's County was begun in January 1966.

This program was the result of cooperative efforts of the Clerk,
the very active Court Records Committee of the County Bar Association,
and the Hall of Records. The Clerk and the Committee, after observing
microfilm systems in Pennsylvania, Texas and Tennessee, solicited our
advice and support in developing a system which would be acceptable
to the principal users—attorneys, title searchers, and employees of title
companies.

In order to ensure that the system developed would maintain the
integrity of the land records and have the capacity to respond to de-
mands made upon it, we examined and evaluated several microforms
with the Clerk and the Committee: 1) the acetate jacket, a transparent
plastic carrier with sleeves to hold the film in flat strips; 2) the aperture
card, a tabulating card holding a frame of microfilm; and 3) the
magazine, a plastic cartridge to hold the film in roll form.

The advantages and disadvantages of each microform were discussed
at length, and the Clerk and the Committee decided to adopt the 16mm