In 1950 and 1951 the Library of Congress, in association with the University of North Carolina, published William Sumner Jenkins's A Guide and Supplement to the Microfilm Collection of Early State Records.

Jenkins and his staff had spent a decade traveling around the country with microfilm cameras, producing 1,870 reels of film "organized under six lettered classes, A-F" and consisting of "regular official materials:" legislative records, statutory law, constitutional records, administrative records, executive records, court records, local records, records of American-Indian nations, newspapers, records of rudimenary states, and miscellany. His introductions and front matter explain the process and the organization.

No serious student of Maryland History can ignore Jenkins's work. As time and funds permit, I hope to bring all that he filmed relating to Maryland into a searchable text and image linked resource at the Maryland State Archives where it will be accessible and stored in our pioneering electronic archives. There, verified and edited over time by volunteers and staff, these basic records of the process of creating a democratic state will be available for all time, authoritative, reliable, and retrieveable (assuming of course, that the public continues to be willing to fund the Maryland State Archives).

As this is a personal goal, as well as a professional one, the journey to make an amplified Jenkins more accessible and useful begins here, on my personal web site, but my introductions and guide will also be mirrored at the Maryland State Archives where the ever-increasing volume and number of image and searchable text files will be stored.

I intend this project as a tribute to Archivists like William Sumner Jenkins, who, with all their foibles and faults (the stories of Jenkins were once legion among the Morris L. Radoff generation of Archivists), really care about preserving and explaining the value of the records that they salvage or are entrusted to their care.

I will begin modestly. From here you will move to an analysis of Jenkins's work  linked to images of the pages of his publication that relate to Maryland (a 3,254kb file requiring a password from the Archives). Over time the analysis (a hyperlinked html environment created by an up-dated and expanded management database) will be enlarged as commentary, links to new sources, and new reference materials are added. My first efforts will be to look at the legal process leading up to and encompassing the process of writing the first Maryland Constittution in 1776 as part of a larger project now under way under the general editorship and direction of Professor Horst Dippel, Universitat Gesamthochschule Kassell, D-34109 Kassel Georg-Forster- Strasse 3, Germany. Paralleling this endeavor will be the Maryland Archives efforts to implement a major new electronic archive: Maryland Legal History On-Line for which funding is currently being sought.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

©Edward C. Papenfuse, December 17, 1997 (ecp/14/00762)

Note:  in order to view the image files you will need to download a Visioneer Paperport viewer and install it on your computer. As of today, the file size is approximately 3 megabytes in its compressed form and expands to about 5 megabytes when operable.