ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 11

results have been achieved. All collections have been unfolded, each
paper has been put in a folder, and each collection, when the number
justified, has been put in one or more boxes. The boxes and folders
in turn have been put in one alcove of the stacks and arranged on the
shelves alphabetically by the name of the donor. For those collections
whose size justifies, a chronological arrangement has been made and a
list of the contents placed in the box. It is hoped to mimeograph all
these lists; two of them "Allen Papers" and "Gist Papers", have already
been mimeographed and distributed. In addition, in order to make
these collections usable an index to proper names for all the private
papers in the Hall should be made, but this is an extremely difficult work
and thus far only one, the "Allen Papers" has been so indexed. Perhaps
there is nothing more complex in the wrhole field of archival administra-
tion than the handling of private papers. It is, of course, easy enough
to accept all such gifts, place them in the stacks and forget them. This
is unfortunately the usual procedure. But it is hardly worthwhile to
preserve such collections without making them available. It is because
a good number of archival agencies have followed this method in the
past that Archival "discoveries" are more often made there than else-
where.

The Archivist has made some effort to lighten this load. In the
first place he has found it necessary to refuse gifts and deposits which
he considered unworthy of preservation or which he thought could be
letter cared for elsewhere as, for example, in the case of printed ma-
terials. Some material which had been accepted in the past has been
transferred to other depositories or placed in a vertical reference file
where they do not need either the space or the attention required by
materials preserved among the gifts and deposits. A card record, ar-
ranged alphabetically by name of the donor, is now kept of all materials
accepted from private sources. Perhaps when the Accessions book is
brought up to date this additional record will no longer be needed.

In addition to gifts and deposits from individuals and the transfer
of records from governmental offices and institutions the Hall of Records
has made several purchases of archival materials. Such purchases should
be made only rarely as there is very little in the budget for this purpose
and the existence of a constant market would immediately place a mone-
tary value on records which might otherwise come to us as gifts or
deposits. However, the Archivist has felt it necessary to make one
purchase this year: he felt in this case that the records were in imminent