ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 27

of the American Historical Association for some years, made some progress
in the course of the year: the General Introduction was submitted by
Professor Philip A. Crowl and efforts are now being made to find a legal
editor.

At its last meeting the Hall of Records Commission suggested that a
volume of the early Chancery Court Proceedings should be published by
the Hall of Records. A start on this project was delayed by the long illness
and the death of Arthur Trader, Administrative Assistant in the Land
Office, which is custodian of the Maryland Chancery Court records. Since
that time a large portion of the seventeenth century text has been tran-
scribed by the staff of the Hall of Records and will be submitted for com-
ment to the members of the Hall of Records Commission at their next
meeting.

The Archivist has been preparing for several years a documented
history of all the state-Owned buildings in Annapolis, past and present. The
manuscript should be finished long before the end of the fiscal year, but
no decision has been made as to the form of publication. Perhaps the
subject makes it unsuitable for inclusion in our series.

REPAIR AND PRESERVATION

We had the good fortune during the past fiscal year to have no
changes in the staff of the Repair Department. Nor were there any pro-
longed illnesses or leaves of absence. As a result we were able to repair and
laminate something over two thousand pages more than in the previous
year, and that year—fiscal year 1950—exceeded the accomplishment of any
earlier year by 7,000 pages. It should be noted, however, that in addition
to the two full-time members of the repair room staff, Mrs. Clifton Moss,
who retired from the employ of the Hail of Records in December 1949,
gave us one day of volunteer work each week during the year.

It is gratifying to report that we were able to devote a bare minimum
of time and effort to those records which had been in the possession of
the State for the longest time and which had suffered most from use—such
records, for example, as those of the Probate Courts. We were free, there-
fore (as we had begun to be the year before), to give attention to those
records of the State government which were in great need of repair but