18 TWENTIETH ANNUAL REPORT

CIRCULATION

The figures on the number of searchers coming to the Hall of Records in
person during the year showed a slight decline from 1954, as the following
table indicates:

Fiscal year 1953 .................... 1,133

Fiscal year 1954 .................... 1,404

Fiscal year 1955 .................... 1,354

These figures do not include seventy schoolchildren and thirty-nine archival
students.

Similarly, the circulation loss apparent in a tabular comparison of three
fiscal years is slight. The totals are as follows:

Fiscal year 1953 .................... 8,225

Fiscal year 1954 .................... 8,433

Fiscal year 1955 .................... 8,006

Counted in the totals mentioned are 1,211 reels of microfilm, indicating
both an increase in microfilm holdings at the Hall of Records and the growing
acceptance by patrons of the use of microreaders over the years. Perhaps
comparisons here are useful:

Reels circulated in 1953 ........ 807

Reels circulated in 1954 ........ 849

Reels circulated in 1955 ........ 1,211

Originally, account was kept of relative circulation so that the most
popular records might be arranged in the stacks on shelves most easily acces-
sible to the Research Room. Thus, the list of books used twenty or more times
a year was evolved. A glance at the list below indicates little change in the use
of basic probate material—wills, accounts, and testamentary proceedings—
but a rapidly growing awareness of the value of other types of records, some
of which had not been readily available in previous years, either in the counties
or on microfilm at the Hall of Records.