18 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL REPORT

St. Paul's Parish, Kent County, Index to Parish Register, 1841-1947,
2,096 cards, microfilm

Stepney Parish, Wicomico County, Index to Parish Register, 1738-1838,
1 volume, microfilm

Talbot County, Index to Land Records, 1833-1951, 15 volumes, micro-
film

REPAIR AND BINDING

Most of the materials handled by our repair room are record volumes
which must be cut out of their bindings, cleaned, laminated and prepared for
rebinding. This year forty-five volumes were processed in this manner. Includ-
ing a relatively small number of unbound papers, the total number of pages
handled was 25,728 — slightly fewer than the year before (25,954). Our
repair staff which includes one full-time worker and one part-time volunteer
also hinged several orginal plats and maps and cut and hinged nineteenth-
century photostatic copies of Maryland county maps. Our binder also found
it possible to laminate one volume of Baltimore County Land Records.

We find some reason for encouragement in the fact that the number of
volumes bound this year increased from sixty in 1956 to seventy-two. This
production rate, if continued in the future, will doubtless take care of our
needs since we never laminate more volumes than this -- sixty-seven of the
items bound this year were laminated record volumes and some of them were
prepared in earlier years. In addition to the binding of books, our binder also
repairs printed books, binds shelf lists, hinges loose pages and otherwise devotes
herself to the many small tasks of book maintenance which occur from day
to day.

In spite of its obvious advantages, we are still not satisfied that we can
continue to do our own binding. We find ourselves facing the inescapable
fact that the cost is high, appreciably higher than if we employed the services
of commercial binders. Perhaps it is not possible in a small workshop ever to
equal the production rate of a large bindery with production-line methods.
It has been our hope though that with sufficient practice our binder can ap-
proach the commercial cost more closely.