16 THIRTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT

Kent County, Index to Original Wills, 1669-1801.
Prince George's County, Index to Original Bonds, 1696-1798.
Prince George's County, Index to Original Inventories, 1696-1787,
1793.

ARRANGEMENT

The influx of accessions has been large and varied during the
past year. It is gratifying to be able to report that we have arranged
on shelves, listed, and entered in the accessions book all the materials
received, including the Talbot County records transferred just before
the end of the previous year.

It must be explained, however, that in most cases the original
papers have been given only a temporary arrangement. When papers
come into our custody, they are usually tied up in bundles. Our first
task is to restore, if possible, the original plan of arrangement of the
bundles. If no such plan can be discovered, we put them in chronologi-
cal order. This serves to meet emergency demands for the papers and
places us in a position to proceed to the final arrangement of the papers
when we are ready to do so.

The final arrangement and indexing of the papers of the Kent
County Register of Wills was begun last year. The original Wills,
1669-1801, were filed in numbered envelopes running from 1 to 1518.
An index to them is located at the Register of Wills' office in Chester-
town. Therefore, when we transferred the wills from the envelopes to
folders we preserved the reference number and used it in making our
own index. We have also placed all of the Administration and Testa-
mentary Bonds, 1664-1796, in folders and arranged them chronologi-
cally. We hope to have the other series completed by the end of the
present fiscal year.

REPAIR AND PRESERVATION

Several times during the last few years I have reported that the
amount of work accomplished by the repair room was about the
maximum that could be expected. This year we have had the un-
interrupted services of two technicians, and the total number of pages
treated exceeded our previous best year by over one thousand. How-
ever, by present methods there is no quick way to repair manuscripts
except by multiplying the number of employees and increasing the