ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 49

RECORDS MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

The Hall of Records continued to make steady progress in pro-
viding an effective records management service for State and County
agencies, and was also able to increase the assistance given to municipal
agencies.

Again this year we devoted considerable attention to the task of
establishing control over State and local records by schedule. Since these
records which represent vital interests of the government or the people
and those that adequately document the operations of government must
be preserved, it requires knowledge both of the agencies which create
the records and the probable use to which they may be put. It further
requires recognition of the public need to preserve records even though
they may no longer be of value to the agency which created them. The
cost of preserving the records in relation to their value must also be
considered. To be meaningful, records schedules must be sufficiently
detailed to insure their proper and easy use, and they must also be
brought up to date from time to time in order to reflect any changes
in the organization or procedures of the agency concerned.

During the year, eighteen schedules controlling 136 record series
were prepared for State agencies, sixteen of these representing revisions
of schedules previously issued for the State Roads Commission. The
loss in November 1961 of the Public Records Examiner assigned to
work with State agencies, and our inability to replace him during the
year, prevented us from completing the review of all records of the
Commission as had been planned.

Meanwhile the program of inventorying the records of Mont-
gomery County, begun near the end of last year, was pushed to com-
pletion. Schedules were established for all the major agencies, and
records which were no longer needed for current operations were
transferred to the County Record Center or destroyed.

The success of the program in Montgomery County, an account
of which appeared in the County Officer, published by the National
Association of County Officials, led to a request from the City of
Rockville, the county seat of Montgomery County, for assistance in
establishing a similar program. Since a new office building was being
constructed to house city agencies, work was begun immediately in an