4 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL REPORT

case, we shall have embarked on the administration of a records center, a new
device invented by the Federal Government and now adopted for state use in
North Carolina, Illinois, Georgia and elsewhere. The primary purpose of the
records center will be to provide storage for records which have ceased to be
active in the daily conduct of any function of government and before they
have lost their usefulness altogether. They will ultimately be destroyed, or in
rare cases transferred to the Archives for permanent retention. This records
service is still in its pioneering period and I am sure that we shall be put on
our mettle to find solutions as the days bring new problems. Future reports
will advise you how well we have succeeded.

I hope that the year's work recorded in this report will seem satisfactory
to you. If we seem slow in certain fields, I would remind you that we could
always go more quickly with more money—for example, the microfilming of
county land records is being done more quickly in Alabama where nearly half
a million dollars has been appropriated for this purpose while we have resorted
to every economical device we could imagine—and we shall have to imagine
others before we are through. We could publish books faster if we were able
to have staff members devote their full time to it, but we are after all a small
state and a small institution; and in our way and in good time we think we
can do what needs to be done without asking for an undue share of the State's
revenues.

Respectfully submitted,

MORRIS L. RADOFF
Archivist and Records Administrator