ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 25

Liber A, 0-22 1748-1753.........	... 624 pages
Liber D, 0-25 1765-1769 .......	. 548 pages
Liber F, 0-27 1773-1775.......	... 430 pages
Liber H, 0-29 1785-1790....................	. 530 pages
Total number of pages of county land records -	13,962 pages
Total number of pages photostated on order...	900 pages
Total ...................................	. 14,860 pages
Total fiscal year 1944.........................	.10,685 pages

MICROPHOTOGRAPHY

In addition to its value as a cheap method of reproducing
lengthy materials for other institutions and individuals, the
microfilm camera at the Hall of Records was used this year to
record requests for absentee ballots. The Maryland Law provid-
ing for absentee voting required the Secretary of State to receive
the application, to record it in his office and then to send it to the
proper local election officials who provided the ballot. The
unexpectedly large number of applications coming shortly be-
fore the election made it necessary to find some quicker means of
recording in the Office of the Secretary of State than typewrit-
ing. The microfilm camera proved to be the ideal solution. This
single service probably saved the State the cost of the camera.

Microphotographic copies of all the important colonial series
at the Hall of Records which have been deposited for the period
of the war in Western Maryland, will be returned to the Hall of
Records in the near future. The Hall of Records Commission
in making this decision also recommended that positive copies
of these negatives be deposited in certain other research centers
so that study of Maryland's early history may be made more
convenient, and also so that these copies may provide insurance
against the total loss of the record should some calamity destroy
the originals at the Hall of Records.

Among the more extensive items microfilmed this year were
the Diary of Tench Tilghman for the Southern Historical Collec-
tion at the University of North Carolina, shipping papers for
the Office of Naval Records and Library of the Navy Department
at Washington, and 8 volumes of the Annapolis Evening Capital
at the Hall of Records which have deteriorated so badly that it is
no longer possible to let them be used.