ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 25

Records which had been received from public and semi-public
sources had fared better. However, the large collection which had
come from the Court of Appeals was not accessioned in good order
because in accessioning an effort had been made to arrange the
books in the order in which they had been catalogued in 1926. Por
the large majority of the records this catalogue was correct, but a
considerable minority of them had been arranged seemingly without
detailed knowledge of the history of that court or of the Provincial
or General Courts for whose records the Court of Appeals had
become the depository. Neither was proper study given to the
records of the Land Office before accessioning. Finally in no case
were loose papers (a very large part of the Court of Appeals
materials) accessioned.

It was necessary, therefore, to revise some of the early acces-
sioning before newer materials could be touched. Most of this work
was accomplished this year. At the beginning of the year nothing
had been accessioned which had come to the Hall of Records after
December, 1936. At the end of the year the work had been com-
pleted for materials transferred before December, 1940; by the end
of this year we expect to be able to accession our materials as soon
as they arrive. In addition to the Assistant Archivist and the
Librarian who did the actual accessioning, credit must be given to
Mr. Skordas and to the group of WPA and NYA workers whom he
directed. These workers received the materials, studied each
volume and each paper, and arranged them in good order. To say,
therefore, that the materials have been accessioned through Decem-
ber 1940 means also that they have been arranged and made avail-
able for use. Arranging and accessioning are necessary and proper
ends in archival administration, but they are also the necessary pre-
liminaries to indexing and cataloguing, and for that reason this
work was pushed forward with all possible speed since no kind of
final indexing is possible without it and no kind of cataloguing at
all. To the Archivist this work with the records inside the stacks
and out of view of the public has been the most gratifying of the
year and he calls it, therefore, to the special attention of the Com-
mission.