ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 29

to their original order than it did to rearrange them in the first place.
It is hardly profitable to list projects begun and abandoned, pro-
jects begun and finished and then done again, etc. What is listed be-
low is, therefore, in a sense a net profit statement.

Fumigation.

Unfortunately there was no fumigating equipment in the be-
ginning so that a large mass of records had to be fumigated after
having been first placed in the stacks. This was far from ideal, but
the best that could be done under the circumstances. The process
was extremely costly in time as there is no elevator in the stacks
and there is no basement entrance convenient to the fumigator.

Cleaning.

An effort was made to clean records on arrival but no mech-
anical equipment had been provided for this purpose and there was
not sufficient personnel to do the job manually. Besides, the sixth
deck was not completed until 1940 and the bare concrete produced
a good deal of dust which was carried throughout the vault area
by the air-conditioning system.

Identification and accessioning.

In general the volumes were considered to be correctly identi-
fied by the office of origin or the previous depository. This proved
to be not always the case. Toward the end of this period a resurvey
by the HRS marked the beginning of a close scrutiny of each item.
As was to be expected, accessioning was far behind receipts. The ac-
cessioning of unbound materials had for the most part been post-
poned.

Arrangement.

Bound materials were for the most part placed on the shelves.
Arrangement of the unbound materials made little progress due
mainly to the insuperable difficulties of arranging bundles of papers
badly labelled or not labelled at all, and in many cases badly dis-
arranged prior to transfer to the Hall of Records.