ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 53

moments, the Clerk was satisfied that the system had proved acceptable,
and he discontinued the photostatic copies on July 5, 1966. It is hoped
that the acceptance of the system will lead other Clerks to adopt micro-
film systems for the current recording of their records.

In the Report for last year, the problem of maintaining adequate,
up-to-date indexes in the Clerk's offices was discussed. On our recom-
mendation, the Comptroller authorized the Clerks of Court to contract
for the Cott data-processed indexing service to ease the task of keeping
indexes current and to eliminate expensive re-indexing. This year,
five more Clerks requested authority to employ this service: Charles,
Queen Anne's, Talbot, Wicomico, and Worcester, and the Comptroller
approved their requests.

In a rapidly growing State, such as Maryland, the space require-
ments for both staff and records may always be a problem in the
offices of the Clerks of Court and the Registers of Wills. However,
the adoption of new techniques of record-making and record-keeping
will go far toward alleviating this problem.

OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

The question of what to do with the Abstracts of Conveyances
which were left at the Hall of Records when the Land Office moved
to new quarters some years ago, cropped up again this year when the
Land Office was abolished and its functions turned over to the Hall
of Records. We contemplate moving a large number of Land Office
records to the Hall of Records and we shall need the room now occupied
by these abstracts. In an opinion of the Attorney General of December
4, 1963 (see my 29th Annual Report) the question was whether the
Comptroller of the City of Cumberland could give certain of his records
which had been scheduled for destruction to a private citizen of
Allegany County. The Attorney General held that "the giving away of
nonvaluable records 'destroys' these records and, therefore, I feel that
the custodian would then have the right to so 'destroy' them."

I had thought of offering these abstracts to the various county
historical societies instead of destroying them, and I thought that this
opinion gave me leave to do so. However the Hall of Records Com-
mission felt that it would be safer to present the specific problem to
the Attorney General for his opinion. This I did and I received a reply