44 TWENTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT

of preserving records in relation to their value also must be considered.

Since the passage of the Records Management Act in 1953, we
have established 400 schedules for the records of State agencies and
institutions. For the most part, a single schedule governs all the records
of an agency or of major departmental divisions or institutions, and it
is prepared in sufficient detail to ensure that the agency knows when
records are to be transferred to the records centers, to the archives, or
destroyed. Although schedules have been established for almost all of
the records of State agencies, this aspect of our work continues to
require considerable time. As new agencies are created or the duties
of existing ones are changed by legislation, additional schedules are
necessary. As new records procedures are adopted, old schedules must
be revised.

Encouraging progress has also been made in establishing control
over the records of county, bi-county and municipal agencies. There is
a basic difference between the State and local records program. Al-
though local officials may not destroy records without first offering
them to the Archivist, participation in our efforts to schedule all local
records is voluntary. Most local officials, however, recognize the need
for improved records control and are eager to cooperate. Work in this
field was begun experimentally in 1954, but it was not until 1956 that
an intensive effort was made to bring the records in the county court-
houses under control. Attention was first given to the records subject
to destruction in the offices of the Clerks of Court and the Registers of
Wills. While this work was being pushed toward completion, we were
asked to review the records of other county and municipal offices.
Since 1956, we have established 250 schedules for county and bi-
county agencies and twenty-three for municipal agencies. Our work in
Montgomery County, one of the most populous in the State, has been
particularly rewarding. Not only are the records of the county and of
the city of Rockville now governed by schedule, but a records center
houses the non-current records of the county.

As a result of the schedules issued since 1953, a total of 97,601
cubic feet of storage and filing space has been released in the offices
of State, county, and municipal agencies. This is the equivalent of the
space occupied by 16,000 four-drawer letter-size filing cabinets. In the
Baltimore and Annapolis areas, records authorized for destruction have
been sold to various waste paper companies on a contractual basis; in
other areas of the State, they have been burned. The State has realized
$21,961.24 from these sales, of which $15,175.25 has been returned to
the General Funds of the State.

Until 1958, the lack of central depositories for records which must
be maintained for a given period but which have little current usage