ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 25

petent person to fill the position of Historian-Archivist, it was not
until early November that he obtained the services of one of the out-
standing professional archivists in the country, Mr. Sherrod E. East,
who had recently retired after thirty years of service at the National
Archives.

Mr. East could not have been more cooperative or considerate.
Even before he accepted the post, he consulted with us to make certain
that he would not be infringing upon our prerogatives. We assured
him we would be pleased to have him accept. Soon after assuming
his duties, Mr. East conferred with us on various aspects of his new
assignment. We agreed on a type of file box that would best meet the
needs of the Convention and also be suitable for filing in our stack
area. We also discussed arrangement and labeling. When the time
came to transfer the records, Mr. East had prepared a descriptive in-
ventory listing the records which were considered to be of permanent
value. He even made certain that the official mace, which had sym-
bolized the authority of the President of the Convention, was included
with the records, when they were transferred on April 19, 1968.
Whatever other faults the Convention may have had, it was a textbook
operation from the archival viewpoint.

Even though the proposed Constitution was defeated at the
election of May 14, 1968 and thereby deprived of any force as a
legal instrument, the records relating to it are of considerable historical
importance. The State Legislature is already studying its various features
to determine if some of them cannot be adopted as amendments to
the present Constitution. Other states, in process of revising their own
constitutions, have asked for copies of the proceedings, committee re-
ports and other materials relating to our Convention, presumably
hoping to avoid the frustrating experience we had in Maryland.

Microfilm continues to serve as one of our most useful tools for
acquiring records. From the Office of the Clerk of the Superior Court
of Baltimore City, we received film copies of 648 volumes of Land
Records dating from 1935 to 1941. This leaves eight more years of
records to be filmed; for, in 1949, the law that requires clerks to make
microfilm copies of all land records filed in their offices for recording,
became effective. We are hopeful that in two more years this project
will be completed.

In fiscal year 1967, we reported the microfilming of 620 volumes
of records in the office of the Baltimore City Register of Wills. Last