ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 25

PHOTOCOPYING

The table given here below is divided throughout into two categories:
"Paid Orders" and "Office Orders." "Paid Orders" includes all the material
furnished to private individuals, corporations, and agencies of government
other than those of the State of Maryland. Since we will photocopy anything
which is available to searchers here at the Hall of Records, this category is
very miscellaneous; however, the materials most in demand are land and pro-
bate records, and certified acts of the General Assembly. Among the "Office
Orders," the largest item is the copying of all State Budget Amendments for
the Department of Budget and Procurement; second in quantity is, perhaps,
copying for members and committees of the General Assembly. Almost all
paid orders are photostats because of the need of special equipment to read
microfilm.

Microfilm office orders are more diversified. In my report for last year
I listed some of the uses of microfilm. Examples from this year's work will
illustrate all these uses.

FILMING FOR INSURANCE PURPOSES:

Those record volumes which are rebound at the Hall of Records and put
into service without canvas jackets must be gold-lettered in Baltimore since
we do not have the specialized equipment required for this kind of work.
Before each volume is taken out of the building, a microfilm insurance copy
is made.

In addition to the filming of current deeds, mortages, releases, wills and
Orphans* Court proceedings which is either done or supervised by the Records
Management Division, we are devoting as much time as possible to the filming
of land records prior to 1949 still in the courthouses, as an insurance against
loss of these very vital records. These copies are, of course, prime research
materials as well.

FILMING OF MATERIALS NOT OTHERWISE AVAILABLE:

Many records not available to us in the original were added to our col-
lection through microfilm copies. In this group, this year, are found church
records, indexes to individual documents loaned to us by scholars, rare printed
works, including certain public documents some of which we exchanged with
The Library of Congress for film of other rare documents in their possession.

FILMING IN ORDER To CONSERVE ORIGINAL MATERIAL:

Preventing damage to the originals is one of the important uses of film.
This device is especially useful in the case of late nineteenth century newspa-
pers which are now deteriorating badly. There is a bonus, too, in using film
instead of the original newspapers because bound newspaper volumes are heavy
and otherwise difficult to handle. This year we filmed the Annapolis Evening