ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 45

tribution to offices in Annapolis and Baltimore. The Income Tax
Division by using COM for the 1968 index realized a saving of
$18,814. There will also be a saving for the Records Management
Division in the future since we have been converting this hard copy
file to microfilm on a rotary microfilmer in our Record Center. With
the current conversion of this file to film, this microfilming can be
discontinued for the files created after 1967 resulting in a yearly
saving of $2,123 in personnel and film costs. The combined annual
saving on this one project will be $20,937.

The responsibility of the Records Management Division has
remained relatively constant in these programs. We negotiate with the
various COM service bureaus regarding price and turn around time,
coordinate the transfer of the magnetic tapes to the service bureau,
inspect the camera film for quality and completeness, and duplicate
and package the multiple copies. We also make recommendations to
the operating agencies regarding the acquisition of microfilm retrieval
equipment. This has been a natural extension of our central microfilm
service.

We continue to use a commercial service bureau for COM con-
version, but this has not always been a happy experience. There have
been problems of quality and delivery. We found it necessary to recom-
mend a change in service bureaus when the service and film quality of
the first bureau used degenerated to an unacceptable level. This
unhappy experience convinced us that the State should control the
conversion of the tapes to film in order to insure the continued genera-
tion of high quality microfilm. We, therefore, prepared a report on
the Gasoline Tax COM program together with a proposal that the
State lease a COM to be operated by the Records Management Division
on a service center basis. The report was submitted to the Budget
Bureau and circulated among State agencies with potential COM
applications. It was decided that firm commitments from users of the
service, sufficient to support the operation, would be necessary before
the COM was ordered. Accordingly, we contacted a number of State
agencies and asked for a commitment.

Those agencies with successful COM applications agreed to com-
mit themselves, but a number of large potential applications are not
operational at this time and these agencies were reluctant to make a
commitment. We expect to continue to expand COM applications,