ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 59

permit the destruction of old volumes which had been transcribed and
certified. In some counties the number of such volumes was so great that
they occupied an appreciable amount of valuable vault or storage space in
the courthouse. Both amendments to this Act were adopted.

There were several other bills in which we were interested, although
they were not introduced at our request. Not one of them seemed to be
opposed but they were all held in committee. House Bill No. 18 proposed to
amend Section 63 of Article 17 to eliminate the requirement that all Land
Record volumes be indexed within the volume itself. Since general indexes
are now universal, there is no need to maintain volume indexes. From our
point of view this proposal was important because it would reduce the
amount of microfilming that we are required to do for the Land Office by
twenty to thirty pages per volume.

We were very much interested in House Bill No. 864 which provided
that any instrument recorded by a Clerk of the Coun in the counties or
the Clerk of the Superior Court of Baltimore City might be destroyed after
ten years. At the present time it is not possible to destroy any papers of
this kind: they are never indexed and rarely used, and they occupy a large
part of all available vault space. This bill was introduced by members of
the Washington County delegation who, however, were unable to muster
strong support for it. We believe that if the retention period were extended
from ten to twenty years, especially in the case of land records, better
success may be expected in the future. Our interest in this bill stems from
the fact that we are consulted by Clerks of Court and by the Comptroller
of the Treasury on many matters having to do with record keeping in the
courthouses, chief among which are vault space and record filing equipment.
Appreciable savings could be realized in space and equipment if a bill such
as this one were passed.

Curiously enough, while it was impossible to get support for a general
law which would help alleviate the crowded conditions of our county
vaults, a local law was passed which marked what we hope will prove to
be a first step in this direction. I quote from Chapter 670, Acts of 1953:

"(d) The Clerk of the Circuit Court for Allegany County
is authorized to destroy all Conditional Sales Contracts three years
after the date of filing in said Circuit Court."