Madam Chairman, members of the Committee, I am the State Archivist and Commissioner of Land Patents, Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse. The Deputy Archivist, Chris Allan, is appearing with me today.
This hearing gives us the opportunity to report on the State Archives' efforts to care for the permanent records of the state and to make them accessible to our citizens.
I want to thank Mr. Stoops for his thorough and sensitive review of our budget request.
Because of the holiday delay in processing paperwork by the Department of Personnel, it appears as if we have 4 vacancies when in fact we have only one.
Mr. Stoops' analysis raises two questions: how will we manage the Peabody Art Collection once it becomes the property of the state, and whether or not we should use special funds as opposed to general funds to create a new position at the State Archives intended to help us manage and maintain our World Wide Web site.
With regard to the Peabody Art Collection, we have established a good record of managing the $7.2 million dollar, 1100-item inventory of the Artistic Properties Commission in at least a dozen sites, as well as administering over a million dollars in loans of artistic property to the state. We have never had an audit exception in that regard and account for all items through an inspection that we conduct annually. In our most recent audit, concerns were raised about the management of our equipment inventory which we have addressed and which are separate and distinct from Artistic Property.
With regard to the proposed new position, let me first address some of the areas we raised last year in the form of a progress report, after which I will return to the question of funding the proposed new position.
Last year, I appeared before this committee and distributed materials that promised to place information from the Maryland Manual on line for the use of government officials and our citizens.
I am pleased to report that since that time, the Archives has established a site on the World Wide Web of the Internet that provides comprehensive information on the organization of Maryland state government and the activities of the Archives. The materials we are presenting here today are drawn almost entirely from this resource which has been visited over 25,000 times since it was inaugurated a year ago.
The printed version of the 1996-1997 Maryland Manual will be published on June 30. This hardbound, paper edition of the Manual is required by statute and is intended to be the permanent historical record of state government at a particular point in time. Electronic records are too volatile and cannot be considered permanent unless rendered in some other format such as paper or microfilm.
We have deferred publication of the printed edition until this June in view of the substantial changes in the structure of government that have been proposed by the administration and await your consideration this session. In the meantime, we will continue to provide accurate and timely information on all aspects of Maryland state government on our Web site, assuming we continue to have the staff resources to do so.
The FY 97 budget submitted for the Archives defers publication of the hard copy Manual from the traditional biennial cycle to every four years. Funds are provided for the contractual staff to continue to gather and update information on Maryland state government but not for the publication of the printed book in FY 1997. We propose publishing on the Internet the information which in the past had been included only in the printed Manual. This will allow a quick response to changes that is far more useful than what we have been able to provide within the context of a traditional biennial paper publication. As an example, among your materials you will find the photograph and biography of Treasurer-Elect Dixon that we are in the process of placing on our Web site.
In cooperation with CITEC (Citizens Information Technology Education Corporation), a non-profit organization devoted to enhancing public awareness of the value of information technology, we have approached the leadership of the General Assembly with a proposal to place helpful information about the legislative branch on the Web. A very important and innovative feature of this proposal is Who Are Your Elected Officials? which allows any citizen to find out who represents him or her in the General Assembly and Congress just by entering a home or business address. For those citizens who do not know who represents them, or for those who want to know how to contact their legislators, this will be an important service that should be available at every public library and school media center. Such a service also will be of considerable benefit to the General Assembly itself, as it will allow legislative offices to immediately route constituent inquiries and requests to the appropriate delegate, senator, or member of Congress.
The changes in government that I alluded to earlier in discussing the Maryland Manual also have had considerable impact on the more traditional role of the Archives as a custodian of paper records. The efforts of state and local agencies to make do with fewer resources has resulted in less leased office space and more concentration of staff in existing space. This, coupled with cost reductions in microfilming programs, the failure of some agencies to effectively administer electronic records, and unforseen deposits of records, has meant that the Archives has been asked to accept more paper records than were anticipated when the archival facility on Rowe Boulevard was planned in 1981. We are effectively out of space at a time when we expect that transfers of permanent records will approach 112,976 Clamshell Equivalents (CSE) during the next five years (25% of the capacity of our current facility which is already full). I can provide you with a detailed analysis of the state's permanent record storage situation for your review, if that would be helpful.
To meet our pressing space needs, our budget request includes funds to rent and maintain an adjunct archival facility which we are presently operating in conjunction with the Maryland Deposit Insurance Fund (MDIF). The Fund has 45,600 CSE of record material which will be reduced by about two thirds after five of its six receiverships are closed during the next year and a half. We expect that this space (with additional shelving and scanning equipment to be requested next year) will provide the capacity required to accommodate the transfers of permanent record material anticipated during the next five years. We are developing a strategy to reduce the volume of material through conservation measures such as microfilming, and more effective utilization of information technology such as scanning and storing on CD. With administration approval, I hope to be presenting solutions to these problems at our hearing next year.
With regard to the finances of the Archives, we have implemented numerous changes in the management of our budget and accounting operations. We have responded to the most recent review conducted by the legislative auditors by hiring a CPA to help us more effectively manage revenue and appropriations with the financial and equipment inventory controls the auditors have recommended.
In the past, I told this committee that our goal was to support baseline activities of the Archives with general funds and to finance the balance of our programs with earned revenue and proceeds from the Endowment that was created in 1993. About thirty percent of our funding is currently derived from earned revenue. I hope that revenue from sources other than the general fund will account for half the support of the Archives within the next several years, but our success in this regard is dependent upon the state of the nation's economy and the degree to which private giving is able to support a rapidly growing list of what were once publicly funded services.
Last year, I reported that the Archives' Endowment had a balance of $171,773. Over the past year, we have undertaken several activities which have made it possible to place another $24,768 in the Endowment bringing the balance to $196,541 as of December 31, 1995. Investment income from the Endowment is intended to support biographical research, geographical study and the development of educational materials for Maryland students and teachers.
A public/private partnership undertaken as an activity of the Endowment was the transfer and preservation of the records of the old Savings Bank of Baltimore. Founded in 1817, this bank was the first in Maryland to serve the needs of the average citizen and what in the 19th century was known as the 'working poor.' Among its records are the accounts of slaves, women, a number of Baltimore organizations, and many of the African American soldiers who served in the Civil War. The Bank's records have provided valuable material that augments the educational packet we have developed called In The Aftermath of Glory. This packet focuses on the lives and careers of black soldiers from the close of the Civil War until the early 20th century and is an important element in our educational outreach program.
We are grateful to First Fidelity Bank and its successor First Union National Bank for their financial support of this project to preserve such a rich collection. We are also grateful to our volunteers, such as Agnes Kane Callum, who have helped us to interpret the value of the collection.
The development of the Internet as a new medium of communication that I have discussed in the context of the Maryland Manual is also an extraordinary tool for education. Although many of our schools are equipped with computers, there has been little work to train teachers to effectively use these in either curriculum development or classroom activities, particularly in the humanities.
In the past year, the Archives developed an electronic classroom for its NEH-supported Summer Teachers' Institute using four curriculum packets that are now available online for students and teachers. This innovative educational technique is now being used in a partnership between the Archives and the Anne Arundel County Public Schools to train teachers in the use of Internet technology combined with historical documents to improve and enhance the teaching of history and social studies. We designed eight computer learning stations which we will use to instruct groups of teachers. The learning stations were paid for by the school system and are on loan to the Archives for the next twelve months, after which time they will be returned for use in media centers.
An illustration of the possibilities and promise of this approach is the packet All the News which documents the events leading up to the American Revolution as seen through contemporary reports in the Maryland Gazette. The reproduction of the October 10, 1765 edition of the Maryland Gazette, which I have distributed to each of you, is representative of the materials we have been developing for online access from the electronic classroom or for distribution on paper for those classroom not yet connected to the Internet. Included in your folders is a more complete description of the Archives' electronic classroom and a list of all the Document Packets produced to date.
It is a fair question to ask why it is we are seeking a new position funded by general funds at a time when government must be made smaller and more efficient. The position we are asking for is designed to make it possible for us to function more efficiently with fewer people. The size of the Archives staff is not as large as it was in 1991 and in fact with this position will still be smaller than it was five years ago. We have demonstrated that we can do more with less. We have done so by moving as much of our information services to the electronic world as possible, but to effectively manage that world and maintain it, we need to have a reliable core of full-time professional staff which includes a position like the one we are requesting.
An archives is the conscience of the public, the repository of its collective memory, recording the triumphs and failures of the past and pointing the way to remedying the ills of the present. Without an archives, there cannot be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Without convenient and affordable access to reliable information gleaned from the Archives, no society can call itself truly free. No one understood this better than Thomas Jefferson, who in the Declaration of Independence, severely criticized the King of England for calling "together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures." Today our public records are increasingly electronic. To keep the public from them is not only a unconscionable, but can easily mean the end of a well-informed, free society.
If we are fatigued by anything today, it is by a government not yet able to guide us through the torrent of change and information that issues daily from the technological revolution. Somewhat like Noah in the face of the flood, the Archives has taken the lead in building a simple, cost-effective ark designed to help government weather the storm and deposit us all safely on dry ground. The vessel is christened appropriately a 'homepage' on the World Wide Web of the Internet.
To keep that 'vessel' viable we need full-time professional managers with the computer skills necessary to keep the equipment and the software functioning properly without significant interruption. In assigning priorities to the use of public funds, it is wise to invest something in the future of government services such as the creation and maintenance of reliable historical and government information on the Internet. Raising special funds for this purpose is both uncertain and unreliable at a time when demands on the private sector for funding public needs are increasing at a phenomenal rate. I hope you can see your way clear to granting us this general fund request as an investment in the future that is needed not just for the Archives but for the future of education and good government generally.
Thank you