ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 17

Harriet Scofield, Cleveland, Ohio.
Martha D. Smith, Knoxville, Tennessee.

SURVEY OF STATE RECORDS

The General Assembly of 1952 appropriated $48,000 to provide for a
much-needed survey of the records and the record-keeping practices of the
State government. The contract was awarded to Records Engineering, In-
corporated of Washington, D. C., an organization of experts who had
previously done similar work in the State of Virginia, in Montgomery
County, Maryland, and elsewhere. The project got under way in April
1952 and was well advanced by the end of the fiscal year. At this writing
all of the reports have been filed and recommendations have been made
which if properly implemented by stature or otherwise should do much to
solve many of our problems of space, disposal, microfilming, et cetera. A
detailed account will be furnished you in my report for fiscal year 1953. I
want to advise you at this time, however, that in accordance with your
instructions I have served as Chairman of the Governor's special committee,
appointed to maintain liaison between the State Government and Records
Engineering, Incorporated. The other members of the committee are Mr.
Joseph O' C. McCusker, Chief Deputy Comptroller, Mr. James G. Rennie,
Director, Department of Budget and Procurement, and Mr. Michael J.
Potthast, Assistant State Auditor. Mr. Robert M. Thomas, Assistant At-
torney General, has acted as legal adviser to the committee.

RECORDS DISPOSAL

In order to inform the various agencies of the State about the correct
procedure for disposing of non-current records and to prevent the unauthor-
ized destruction of public records, the Board of Public "Works on
August 31, 1951, sent out a circular letter on the subject. Enclosed with
this letter were copies of Sections 153, 154, 155 and 156 of Article 41 of
the Annotated Code of Maryland (1951 Edition), which regulate records
disposal. Shortly after this letter was mailed out, we received a number of
inquiries for advice on the subject.

Elsewhere in this report, the project to survey the records of State
agencies that was begun last spring is described. This, of course, will have
a most important effect on the future handling of the record disposal
problem. The addition of a Public Records Examiner to the staff should
in the long run be of even greater significance; for, the recommendations