ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 17

AIDS TO RESEARCH

Excellent progress was made during the year in the preparation
of finding mediums and descriptive materials. Certain projects
which we had hoped to finish in the course of the year were neglected
in favor of some others which seemed more pressing and for which
we were better prepared. In general, this year we favored our pub-
lication program over the preparation of house indexes.

The published items completed during the course of the year
are the following:

Tenth Annual Report of the Archivist of the Hall of Records, for
the Fiscal Year July 1, 1944 through June 30, 1945. These Reports are
listed among the finding aids because they contain lists of accessions
not otherwise accessible which supplement the printed Catalogue of
1942. A limited number of these Reports from the fifth through the
tenth are available for free distribution to archival and historical
institutions. The first four were never printed.

Land Office and Prerogative Court Records of Colonial Maryland.
This volume is Publication No. 4 of the Hall of Records Commission
series. It contains an historical essay describing the land agencies
set up by the Proprietary with emphasis on the record-keeping func-
tions of these agencies. This essay is followed by a volume-by-vol-
ume list and analysis of the records in the Land Office for the Col-
onial period. The Prerogative (Probate) Court records are similarly
treated in the second half of this volume. These studies were pre-
pared by Dr. Elisabeth Hartsook, a former member of the staff of
the Hall of Records, and Gust Skordas, Assistant Archivist. This
cloth-bound volume is for sale by the Hall of Records. Price, two
dollars.

Calendar of Maryland State Papers No. 2 The Bank Stock Papers.
This volume is Publication No. 5 of the Hall of Records Commission
series. These papers, which deal with the recovery by the State of
Maryland of the sinking fund which had been invested in Bank of
England Stock to redeem the paper currency of the Province, come
from the "Blue Books" of the "Rainbow" series at the Hall of Re-
cords, from the collection which was found in a safe of the Secretary
of State's office several years ago and subsequently transferred to