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A Revolution in Archives, continued from page 13
junior, Daren Brantley, supplemented by
Eun-hae Choe, Leslie Mathew, and Jessica
Stevens, all under the supervision and
management of Greg Lepore, who more
than any single person has made Archives of
Maryland Online a viable reality. Greg, as
Associate Editor, has kept his eye on
production and made the best use of
available resources, while Lynne MacAdam
and Jean Russo have provided thoughtful
perspective and editorial skills of the highest
order. Roger H. Kizer Ball has helped
manage and train an enthusiastic part-time
staff, while offsite staff like Kristen Smith
Hair have rendered eighteenth-century
printing into searchable text. Without Chris
Allan's budgetary skills and willingness to
convert all our requests for funding into
bureaucratically acceptable argument, and
without his designing the networking and
electronic archives of which Archives of
Maryland Online is an integral part, however,
none of what we have accomplished to date
would have been possible.
Some thirty years ago, out of the prolonged
lunchtime discussions led by Lois Green
Carr, came a revolution in the interpretation
of early American society. Known as the
Maryland Hall of Records Mafia, Lois,
Lorena Walsh, and Rus Menard, and their
many disciples transformed the study of
colonial society by effective and exhaustive
use of such primary sources as Maryland
probate records. Hopefully, out of what I
have been brazen enough to call the
Maryland Archival Revolution will come a
new appreciation of the vastness and
diversity of historical records made accessible
through the Maryland State Archives
website (mdsa.net) and its premier effort at
bringing the text of archival material to as
wide an audience as possible, archivesof
maryland.net.
EDWARD C. PAPENFUSE
Archivist of the State of Maryland