ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 51

Health Department, the Department of Public Improvements,
and the Department of Education. GOES also recommended that
the drawings of the State Roads Commission be converted to
microfilm.

It was decided to begin the project by microfilming the sub-
division plats of several counties stored in the Annapolis office.
This series was selected in order to provide training for the
camera operator and to enable us to make copies of the plats
from microfilm rather than continue the photostat operation.
This also permits us to supply aperture cards of the subdivi-
sion plats to the Clerks of Courts who do not have photocopy
capability.

We also began to convert the approved drawings of the Fire
Marshal to microfilm. The original plan was to supply this film
in aperture cards to the Fire Marshal but the time required to
prepare the cards convinced us to try roll film with extensive
indexing. This proved satisfactory and the program is now well
under way.

Two problems have been encountered in this program that
severely limit the usefulness of the microfilm. The primary prob-
lem has been the poor quality of the drawings to be microfilmed.
The originals are often drawn outside the State agency by con-
tractors and consultants without uniform drafting standards.
Many of these drawings are oversize and must be filmed in
sections. Some are poor copies of mediocre originals and are not
legible.

In addition, the State agencies that are potential users of
the microfilm service have not developed a uniform numbering
scheme for those drawings of mutual interest. Consequently,
we might be filming the identical drawing four times for four
agencies.

These problems appear solvable only through the establish-
ment of standards of drafting for microfilm on all drawings sub-
mitted to the State and the development of a uniform identifying
system that will control the problem of duplicate microfilm files.
We have encouraged the agencies to set up standards but without
success. Until standards are established, the engineering draw-
ing project cannot support an active retrieval program.