30 FIRST TO FOURTH ANNUAL REPORTS

Unfolding and boxing of unbound materials.

Much of the time and effort of the Archivist and the staff were
devoted to unfolding and boxing, and a great deal was accomplished
as the annual lists below will indicate. A serious handicap in this
work was the lack of background in Maryland institutional history
and procedures which was not overcome until nearly the end of this
period. It was only much later, when the staff had become ex-
perienced enough to direct this type of work and a very large tem-
porary staff of WPA and NYA workers became available, that this
tremendous job was completed.

Fiscal Year 1935-1936.
	boxes	items
Unfolded, placed in folders and boxes but not
always labelled:
Court of Appeals Judgments, Ejectments,
Opinions, Engrossed Bills ...................	807	31,000
Fiscal Year 1936-1937.
Unfolded, placed in folders and boxes but not
always labelled:
Judgments, Ejectments, Opinions, Decrees,
Engrossed Bills, Judicials, Court of Appeals
Reports, Revolutionary Papers, Testamentary
Proceedings, Miscellaneous Papers ..........	860	40,780
Fiscal Year 1937-1938.
Unfolded, placed in folders and boxed but not
always labelled:
Court of Appeals Judgments, Ejectments,
Opinions, Decrees, Judicials, Briefs, Appli-
cations for Admission to the Bar, Engrossed
Bills, Marriage Records, Testamentary Papers,
Wills, Adjutant General's Papers, Revolu-
tionary Papers, Ship Manifests, Warrants,
Chancery Papers ........................	863	(no
		figures)
Fiscal Year 1938-1939.
No records were kept during this year or subse-
quent years. During this year and later a large
number of WPA and NYA workers did this type
of work, cleaning up the backlog in short order.

REPAIR AND PRESERVATION

The first Archivist recognized the pressing need for the estab-
lishment of a modern repair department in order to care for the large