ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 51

hope that the individual who is sought or the problem to be re-
solved will be found in it. If we have the date and the county, and
a case must be taken to court or a dissertation finished, we will
make exceptions, but exceptions of this kind can become suicidal.
In the end, so much work must be left to the individual, and there
is no help for it. The doctoral students who ask for the subject
index have not been properly indoctrinated in the use of primary
materials, and the archival establishments which have tried to
prepare such indexes have failed, without exception.

Finally, something should be said about what records are
available to the searcher. The Hall of Records has followed a
policy of not accepting materials which cannot be made available
at once. The administration of records which may be opened in
twenty years, or in thirty, is difficult, and there is a question
about whether stack space is not too expensive to be used for
years of dead storage. But, while everything in our possession
is open to searchers, the Archivist reserves the right—not yet
tested in the courts—to weigh the purpose of the researcher who
asks for the records of the Maryland Penitentiary, the Baltimore
City Jail, the Industrial Accident Commission, and some others.
It would certainly be tragic to permit the use of our records for
purposes of blackmail.

Should we do more for the individual, or have we already
gone beyond the bounds of what the taxpayer should provide?
If this attempt at an appraisal of this difficult problem stimulates
comment from the members of the Hall of Records Commission
or from other custodians of records or from the taxpayer, who
is perhaps more involved than he knows, it will have served its
purpose well.