member to its staff. We have now reached the point where we must
expand both our staff and our facilities or resign die records management
functions to some other agency. It is for the Hall of Records Commission
to decide which path we should follow. In the federal government and in
the Commonwealth of Virginia separate agencies were created; in Dela-
ware the archival establishment, greatly expanded, assumed the task.

On the answer to this large question will depend the answers to many
smaller ones. For example, if we are to take "noncurrent" in addition to
"historical records" for permanent storage, we shall have to find additional
vault space within the year. If we are to control all the microfilming in
which the state and county governments are now engaged or planning for
the future, we shall need clearer authority from the General Assembly;
and if we do all or part of the microfilming ourselves we shall surely save
the taxpayers a good deal of money, but in order to do so we shall need
a much larger appropriation ourselves. (A fair guess of expenditures for
microfilming in Maryland during the past year would be several hundreds
of thousands of dollars.)

Finally, if not us, should someone else attempt to regulate the expen-
ditures of state officers in the counties for record purposes? During the last
year the Archivist was asked whether three county indexing projects total-
ling $200,000 were necessary. Although he rejected two of them outright
and was lukewarm about the third, they are now all under way. If the
Hall of Records Commission does not feel that the Archivist should enter
a field of this kind, ought he to propose to the General Assembly or to the
Governor that another officer, perhaps titled "Public Records Examiner,"
be created expressly for this purpose?

In spite of the increasing diversion of our time and energy to "records
management" we feel that we have accomplished a good deal in traditional
archival work, and we hope that you too will consider it a fruitful year.

Respectfully submitted,

MORRIS L. RADOFF,

Archivist

HALL OF RECORDS,
Annapolis, Maryland.