ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 13

EXHIBITS, REPORTS AND REVIEWS

As its part in the ceremonies attending the inauguration of Dr. Weigle
as President of St. John's College the Hall of Records prepared a special
exhibit illustrating the history of the College. This exhibit, which was
arranged by Miss Gardner, attracted a large number of visitors and was
highly praised. It was followed by an interesting display of letterheads of
the nineteenth century in the possession of the Hall of Records. Finally,
on the occasion of the inauguration of Governor McKeldin we devoted part
of our exhibit space to mementos of earlier inaugural ceremonies.

Mr. Thomas spoke to the National Genealogical Society at Washington
April 21, 1951. His talk was in the nature of a report of the genealogical
materials available at the Hall of Records and our work in preparing find-
ing aids for the use of searchers. The Archivist described to the Trial Table
of Baltimore City and County some of the most pressing county records
problems. He also prepared an account of the records of the Eastern Shore,
which was read for him at the Annual Meeting of the American Associa-
tion for State and Local History, held June 15, 1951, at Newark, Delaware.

The Archivist reviewed Eleanor Calvert and Her Circle by Alice Coyle
Torbert for the William and Mary Quarterly (April, 1951) and Pre-
liminary Inventory of the Records of the United States Senate by Harold
E. Hufford and Watson G. Caudill for the American Archivist (October,
1950). Mr. Thomas reviewed Doctoral Dissertations in the United States
(No. 17) by Arnold H. Trotier and Marian Harman in United States
Quarterly Book List (Vol. 7, p. 211).

PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PROJECT

Annual and biennial reports of state agencies to the General Assembly,
to the Governor or to a governing board or commission are usually printed
in extremely limited editions (the annual reports of the Archivist of the
Hall of Records are limited to three hundred copies plus overrun), and
having served their immediate purpose are discarded. Within a few years
they become extremely rare and to build up a complete set, as we are
attempting to do, is a long and tedious task. We have found, however,
that even our incomplete collection is most useful to us, to other agencies
of the state government who have failed to preserve a full set of their own
reports, to the committees of the General Assembly and to students of
government and institutional history.