28 FIRST TO FOURTH ANNUAL REPORTS

terials had to be cleaned and fumigated; some had to be repaired
or photographed before they could be used.

It is obvious that all of this could not be done overnight, or in
the course of a year. It is equally obvious that with such an enor-
mous amount of materials it was wise to turn most of the attention
of the staff to the first steps in the process, leaving for a later time
the preparation of indexes, catalogues and other guides. Each year,
in his Annual Reports, Dr. Robertson listed the various series which
had been unfolded, those which had been boxed, and so forth. An
accessions book was begun and pushed rather far along, although it
was impossible to do much with the unbound materials. Moreover,
a good deal had later to be done over because it was decided to cor-
rect certain errors which had been committed in identifying some of
the Court of Appeals and Land Office materials before their trans-
fer to the Hall of Records.

In considering the amount of work accomplished one point
should be borne in mind. In 1935, the study of archival procedure
was just beginning. There is still no universal agreement on most
matters of reception and arrangement, but in the course of ten years
of intense interest in these fields certain formulae have been ad-
vanced and certain patterns developed. The handling of so much
difficult material all at once at the Hall of Records, therefore, had
to begin haltingly—and after it began, a good deal had to be done
over again. This experience has doubtless been repeated in every
archival institution in the country. In those days even the pitfalls
which appear most obvious to us now were not suspected. For ex-
ample, the papers having to do with admissions to the Bar were in-
cluded in the collection which came from the Court of Appeals called
"Miscellaneous Papers." The Bar papers were extracted from the
file and now form a curious series running for a limited period of
time and independent of the classifications set up by the Court of Ap-
peals. Again the Papers of the Prerogative Court which had a sem-
blance of chronological arrangement were rearranged in chronologi-
cal order but in three series depending on the size of the papers.
This was done in order to avoid folding. The Anne Arundel County
Wills which had been in chronological order were put in alphabetical
order. None of these projects would be thought of today; in many
cases it has taken more time and ingenuity to restore these series