20 NINETEENTH ANNUAL REPORT

from Canada, Great Britain and Hawaii. In reply we sent out more letters
than ever before, and while we are glad that we can be of service to our
correspondents, we are only moderately enthusiastic about the increase in
their numbers during the past few years. The difficulty is that in time and
money this is the most expensive service of all.

Number of letters written in fiscal year 1952 ............ 1,190

Number of letters written in fiscal year 1953 ............ 1,293

Number of letters written in fiscal year 1954 ............ 1,318

We are also frequently called on to furnish information over the telephone
and to a certain number of individuals, mainly Annapolitans, who come in
person.

PHOTOCOPYING

The members of the Hall of Records Commission will surely recall
that in addition to the large microfilming program of the Records Manage-
ment Division, the Hall of Records maintains a photographic laboratory with
microfilm and photostat equipment designed to serve the traditional needs of
an archival establishment: providing copies of records for searchers, adding
to our own record collection by photographing records in the counties and
elsewhere which are not available to us in the original, and adding to our
library of books and documents where photography is cheaper than the
printed item.

How varied are the uses of photography in modern archival practice
may be illustrated by a few examples from the work of this year. Although
we completed our program of photostating all the county land record vol-
umes through 1788 some years ago, missed volumes turn up from time to
time: this year we found three eighteenth-century volumes of Cecil County
Land Commissions. The photostatic copies were sent to the County, the
originals remained here. When we were working with the Dorchester County
records, we did not photograph internal (self-contained or volume-) indexes,
because a good general index was available in the Clerk's vault. However,
because of the increase of business during the last ten years, genealogists and
historians have found it progressively more difficult to gain access to these
indexes; therefore we went back to the original volumes, and made and
bound photostatic copies of their internal indexes, which are now used ex-
clusively by researchers. Last year we photostated, after editing, half of a
rough card index to the Laws of Maryland, 1800-1920; this year we com-
pleted the task, 1,264 pages of twelve cards each.