56 THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

Commission, supplied to you by every Clerk of Court as required by
law, copies of which have been made on microfilm by your office.
You state that these abstracts, since microfilm copies are available, are
of so little value that the Land Office did not consider moving them to
their new quarters. You state that it is your feeling that these records
should be disposed of by destruction or otherwise, and a suggestion
was made that perhaps the various county historical societies would
wish to have them in their possession. The question is whether you
as the Archivist or the Hall of Records Commission has the authority
to dispose of these abstracts in this manner.

I call your attention to Section 179 of Article 41 of the Annotated
Code of Maryland (1957 Edition as Amended), which defines
"records". This is a negative definition which attempts to state the
types of materials which shall not be considered "records". In this
section we find included "extra copies of documents preserved only for
convenience of reference" and a further statement "from time to time
the Hall of Records Commission may further designate categories which
may be included within the definition of 'nonrecord material'. Such
nonrecord materials may be disposed of by the custodian when he shall
deem them to be no longer necessary for the operation of his office."

Section 181 of Article 41 Supra deals with the making of photo-
graphs and other reproduction of records and states in essence that
when any material is microfilmed or photographed and such microfilm
or photographs shall be placed in accessible containers by the Hall
of Records Commission, the Commission may, with the approval of
the Archivist of the Hall of Records, under Section 178 of this sub-
title, cause the original records from which the photographs or micro-
films have been made, to be disposed of as the law provides. In
Section 178 which authorizes the destruction of certain records. We
find that the section does not authorize the destruction of (a) papers,
books, documents or files which have been in custody for a period of
lessjhan three years; or (b) public records expressly required by
statute to be maintained permanently, except those which have been
microfilmed and the copy of the original record be available; (c)
permanent books of account; (d) the records of any court of record;
(e) the land records recorded by the respective clerks of the circuit
court for the several counties and die Clerk of the Superior Court of
Baltimore City; but old records of which accurate transcriptions have
been made and placed in use, under the terms of Article 26, Section 17,