Hall of Records Commission
Minutes

of a Meeting at the Maryland State Archives
Electronic Classroom
12 Noon, November 14, 2001

Chairman Bell called the meeting to order at 12:29 p.m.  After welcoming everyone, he referred to September 11, 2001, and asked for a moment of silence for those who died, and for the heroes and heroines who have done so much since that day.

Reports and Minutes of Previous Meetings

• June 6, 2001
 
Chairman Bell had three corrections to the minutes of the last meeting, held on June 6, 2001:
 
• At the top of page 2, fifth line, "Chief Judge E. Norman Veasey" should be changed to read "Chief Justice E. Norman Veasey;"
• On page 5, last paragraph, Senator Boyer was also a Judge.  Chairman Bell questioned the proper title to use and Dr. Papenfuse said that both titles should be used.  Therefore, the minutes should reflect Senator and Judge Boyer;
• On page 7, last paragraph, Judge Murphy was referred to as an outstanding "Chief Judge of Special Appeals."  However, the minutes should reflect his title at the time:  "Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals."

• Special meetings and celebratory events
• Presentation of Taggart Map to staff of the Office of the Clerk of Washington County Circuit Court
When the Archives began clearing out the courthouses of oversized materials in Washington County, a rare wall map of Washington County was discovered.  At the time, Dr. Papenfuse knew of only two other maps in existence.  The clerk was advised that the original should be conserved and placed in the Archives' vault.  The Archives provided the clerk with a facsimile from the scanned original to hang on the wall.  As a result of a newspaper article on the Taggart map, three more Taggart maps were discovered.  The collector who had the Taggart map also had a number of other maps, including an original map of Leitersburg, which we were permitted to copy and make available at the Archives.

Dr. Phillips offered a motion of approval of the minutes as amended, and recognition of the special meetings of the Commission as defined by standing resolution, seconded by Dr. Ridgway and unanimously approved, the Chairman concurring.

Records Retention and Disposal Schedules

• Retention
• Disposal


Dr. Nelson offered a motion of approval of Records Retention and Disposal Schedules as presented, seconded by Dr. Ridgway and unanimously approved, the Chairman concurring.
 

• Schedules for the City of Frederick
Dr. Papenfuse stated that the importance this process was demonstrated when the City of Frederick began disposing of its building permits without an approved schedule. It then found itself in difficulty with a citizen who had right to have access to the records, and couldn't find them.  After a prolonged correspondence, and with the assistance of our counsel, the City was encouraged to comply with the law. At the next Commission meeting, all of their records disposition and retention and disposal schedules will be available for review.  Nothing could be done for that particular individual, however, because the records were destroyed, but from this time forward, records that are supposed to be retained by the City of Frederick will be accessible and saved permanently.

Old Business

Archivist's Report & Staff Activities

• April 19:  Wranglers Club presentation - a mysterious file of newspaper clippings
Dr. Papenfuse postponed talking about his presentation to the Wranglers Club until the next Commission meeting.
• June 26:  Dr. Papenfuse served as a guest lecturer at UMBC's Summer Institute for history teachers, held at the UMBC.  His topic was Defining "American" in the Aftermath of World War II:  Whittaker Chambers vs. Alger Hiss.
Dr. Papenfuse gave a short course to teachers from around the area who were interested in bringing documents into the classroom.  He and Nancy Bramucci, on the Archives staff, have subsequently collaborated with UMBC on a successful grant proposal.  UMBC has been selected as one of the few places in the nation to receive a Senator Byrd grant for the teaching of American History.  As a result, the Archives is going to receive about $27,000 to continue to help teachers interact with documents at the Archives.  Dr. Papenfuse will report more on this at the next meeting.
• Dr. Papenfuse was to attend, on behalf of Judge Bell, the State and Federal Court Historical Society's Fifth Annual Meeting in conjunction with the AASLH Annual Meeting in Indianapolis on September 14-15.
Dr. Papenfuse advised that due to September 11, the AASLH meeting was postponed until next year.
• July 9-31, 2001:  Research trip to England by Dr. Papenfuse
Dr. Papenfuse's trip to England was funded in part by the research on the ownership of the Potomac River.  As he stayed with a good friend, there were no expenses for housing.  The only expense incurred was the cost of transportation.  One important piece of evidence he found was a copy of the original warrant granting Maryland to Lord Baltimore in English.  The lawyers in the Potomac case argued with Dr. Papenfuse saying that, because Lord Baltimore had a copy in his papers, it was not relevant evidence because it would be considered biased, i.e. from Lord Baltimore's perspective.  Dr. Papenfuse went back to the Public Record Office at Kew, England, and found the original recordation of the original warrant among the records of the Privy Council.  The language in it is clear.  It refers to the South Bank of the Potomac River as Maryland's Southern Boundary.  There is no question about where Maryland boundary lies in this regard.  Dr. Papenfuse distributed a copy of the official original record.
• October 8-14, 2001:  Dr. Papenfuse's to visit the Anhui Provincial Archives Bureau at the invitation of Mr. Yan Gui-fu, Director General.
• Remarks by Edward C. Papenfuse

Dr. Papenfuse said that he was invited to go to China two years ago to work with the Provincial Archives of our Sister State, Anhui Province, but no funding was available until this year.  With a very small stipend to help cover part of Dr. Papenfuse's travel to Anhui, he and his wife went to China on October 1 and spent a week as the guests of the people of Anhui Province.  He showed the Commission some of the pictures of his trip, such as "A warmly welcome" sign (in both Chinese and English) that greeted Dr. Papenfuse and his wife, Sallie, at one of their hotels.  Dr. Papenfuse stated that the best archival facilities are in the Communist Chinese party compound where pictures could not be taken inside the archives.  He showed the few pictures he was permitted to take outside.

While in Anhui, Dr. Papenfuse gave a talk at the Anhui Archives on the theme of fragility of electronic records and the need for a cooperative program to see that the basic records that are now being recorded electronically are preserved in both parts of the world.  Next, he showed a picture of the signing ceremony of an agreement, hand annotated and approved by Governor Glendening, between the Archives in Anhui and the Maryland State Archives. The agreement states that we will work towards a mutual exchange between their Archives and ours to benefit from each other's ideas and to help train each other.  Hopefully, sometime in the near future, with the help of private funds, we will host one or two employees of the Anhui Provincial Archives who will work with our archivists during the summer internship program.

• November 12, 2001: Visit to Archives of Russ Morrison and his wife, Jody; Stanley Quick, of Lockheed Martin, and his wife, Marian; and Bill Seitzer to view some important items in the Huntingfield Map Collection.
Russ Morrison, who gave the Archives a map collection that today is worth $8-9 million and his new wife, Jody, brought guests to the Archives.  Dr. Papenfuse showed the Commission the package of information he put together for this visit, starting with an article in the Sun about a map exhibit at the Walters Art Museum.  The article talks about a map at the Walters that Dr. Papenfuse had not seen before showing Maryland and describing Annapolis.  From the article, Dr. Papenfuse hyperlinked to the fact that the map is available for $9,000 from a dealer in London.  From here, Dr. Papenfuse linked to the map itself.  Dr. Papenfuse said that the Archives has one half of the same map on exhibit at the State House.  However, Dr. Papenfuse did not know that there was a prose section to the map that describes the colonies, including Annapolis.  He showed the Commission the prose section and read the section on Annapolis.  He explained that it was his hope that all cartographic information at the Archives would be as accessible someday.

Forthcoming special meetings of the Commission & events of interest

• November 13 & 14, 2001:  Installation of artwork from the two state-owned art collections in Government House
• Date to be determined:  Dedication of statue of Louis L. Goldstein
• Opening of refurbished Peabody Exhibit in Miller Senate Building
The Archives is opening a refurbished Peabody Exhibit at the request of Senator Miller in the Senate Building.  It should be ready by opening day of Session.
• First Citizen Award and presentation of Dear Papa, Dear Charley to members of the Senate
Dr. Papenfuse is pleased to announce that the edited volumes of the Charles Carroll of Carrollton papers are completed   Thanks to Senator Miller, copies are going to be presented to members of the Senate as part of First Citizen Awards this year.
• Speaker's Society
The Archives is going to be involved in the Speaker's Society and Speaker's Medallion Award ceremonies as it has every year.

Recent Acquisitions and Patron Use of the Archives

• Special Collections:
Dr. Papenfuse invited the Commission members to review the Archives Special Collections which are noted in the Bulldog and linked off of the Bulldog on the web.
• Mandel Collection
Dr. Papenfuse noted that Governor Mandel recently lost his wife. Governor Mandel had a lot of material relating to his career as governor in his basement which was deteriorating. He helped the Archives to raise funds to hire interns this summer to work with this material, and it was cleaned and processed into the Mandel Collection (MSA SC 5394).  Dr. Papenfuse showed the Commission an interesting part of the Mandel Collection:  all of the tapes of his press conferences, which included taped speeches by Vice President Spiro Agnew and Senator Edmund Muskie.  Because of this collection, the Archives probably has the most complete set of Senator Muskie's campaign speeches anywhere.  The reason for this is that the reporter, Jim Roland, who was covering Mandel, Agnew, and Muskie, recorded all of their speeches on a hand-held recorder, and he gave the copies of the tapes to Governor Mandel. The Archives inventoried all of the tapes and transfered them to a permanent medium that can be listened to and worked with.  Dr. Papenfuse played a tape of Edmund Muskie delivering a speech in 1968, with the understanding that it was recorded on a hand-held recorder with a fair amount of deterioration.
• Government Records
• Usage statistics:
• Patronage for the first four months of Fiscal Year 2002 totaled 4,431 showing a substantial decline of 22% from the previous year's visitation by 5,711 researchers.  The decline for the months of September and October is 32% over the previous year.
• Telephone inquiries for the year have also declined by almost 20% from 6,534 for the previous year to 5,896 during the same period this year.
• Reference email inquiries have grown dramatically from 913 in the first four months of Fiscal Year 2001 to 1,293 during the same period this year, an increase of 41%.  Reference mail has increased 8%.
• Web site requests are up dramatically with over 10 million requests served in the first four months vs. 4.7 million in the previous year.  Particularly notable is the increase in access to the Maryland Manual 3.2 million as opposed to 2 million.

Finding Aids, Reference Services, and Publications

• Printed version of the 2001 Maryland Manual
A copy of the printed version of the 2001 Maryland Maryland was distributed to the Commission before today's meeting.  Dr. Papenfuse said that it was an extraordinary achievement this year.  It is smaller and more compact than any edition the Archives has done in a very long time, because it includes a slice in time CD of the Maryland Manual on the web.  It is completely searchable and self-activating.  Dr. Papenfuse thanked Lynne MacAdam who was responsible for getting the book out. While Diane Evartt, Editor of the Maryland Manual On-Line, was responsible for all of the information that went into the book, it was Ms. MacAdam who produced the printed volume. Dr. Papenfuse asked for a round of applause and thank you to Ms. MacAdam for her work on the book.  This limited edition of the Manual is almost sold out. However, a new edition should be coming within the next 24 months with the new administration and new legislature.
• archivesofmaryland.net
With limited staff and reduced funds, the Archives is doing the best it can to bring as much material on-line.  Mr. Allan reported on the number of people using this popular web site.  There were 500,000 hits on the site last year and 3.5 million hits this year.  Dr. Papenfuse reported that the following has been added to the Archives of Maryland On-Line:
• Proceedings of the Senate for 1904;
• Session laws;
• Annual reports of the Comptroller;
• All copyrighted Annotated Codes. These codes have been put on-line as images and will be moved into searchable text format in the next year to 18 months.
Dr. Papenfuse introduced Jean Russo, Associate Editor of this project, and expressed how grateful we are for her support. There will be another meeting of the Archives of Maryland advisory board in the next few months.
• plats.net
The plats.net program and fiscal support from the courts are why the Archives had no budget deficiency appropriation this year.  Through the Land Records Improvement Fund and the support of the courts, the Archives is bringing on-line and into searchable form all oversized materials in the courts that relate to land.  The only courts that still need to be brought on-line are Cecil and Dorchester counties and Baltimore City.  Baltimore City is going to be complex because block books will have to be related to oversized materials.

It quickly became apparent that plats.net was so useful an approach to dealing with oversized materials, as well as retrospective records, that some counties have given the Archives money to put other records on-line.  In Queen Anne's County, for example, any page that cannot be read or found in the land records that the Archives still has on film or in the original, is scanned and put up on-line immediately for people at the courthouse.  The Archives has also placed on-line a sample of volumes of Queen Anne's County judgment records.

Education & Outreach

Courses in progress and to be taught by the State Archivist:

Baltimore and the Bay (Fall 2001, Johns Hopkins University)

Public History (Spring 2002, University of Maryland)

Race and the Law:  The Maryland Experience taught with Larry Gibson (Fall 2001, University of Maryland School of Law)
In this course, Dr. Papenfuse reviews every court case involving an African American lawyer where the case made it to the Court of Appeals.  There are an extraordinary number of these, especially in the early part of the 20th century, dealing with such things as housing in Baltimore.  Dr. Papenfuse was also responsible for teaching the first part of the course in which the early history of race relations and slavery in Maryland during the colonial period was discussed.

What is History, (Spring 2002, Johns Hopkins University)

Judicial Institute, Maryland Legal History in the Revolutionary Era (October 18, 2002)

At Judge Bell's and Judge Wilner's request, Dr. Papenfuse will continue his seminar in the Maryland Judicial Institute on Maryland Legal History concentrating on the Era of the American Revolution.

• Summer Internship Program, June 13 - August 22, 2001
The Summer Internship Program was a great success, thanks to Emily Oland Squires who manages the program.  The Commission members can read the Bulldog to find out more about the projects the interns were engaged in.  This past summer, the interns worked extraordinarily hard and accomplished a great deal as can be seen from their web-based products.
• March 25, 2002, Annual Colonial Society Essay Contest, judged by State Archivist.

Administrative & Fiscal Matters

• Commission to Coordinate the Study, Commemoration, and Impact of Slavery's History and Legacy in Maryland:
• report on current research projects: the Coleman Directories
Dr. Papenfuse said that between 1913 and 1946, one man published a directory almost every year of all African American professionals in Baltimore.  He expanded the directories to Annapolis, Prince George's County, and Washington, DC by the 1940s. While there is no complete set of these directories in any one place, the summer interns helped bring on-line all of the Coleman Directories except for the 1924-1925 edition and the 1915-1916 third edition, which Dr. Papenfuse hopes to find shortly.  The Commission was shown what the directories look like.  They are a rich source of the history of the African American community and the aftermath of slavery.
• Hiring of Research Coordinator
Today was the first day on the job for the Research Coordinator, David Taft Terry, who could not attend the Commission meeting, as he was at a meeting about the Underground Railroad.  In response to a question from Dr. Phillips, Dr. Papenfuse explained that David Taft Terry's role is to make sure that all of the research done for the Slavery Commission is focused, completed on time, and made publicly available.
• Minutes of Meetings:

There have been two meetings of the Slavery Commission.  Its next meeting will be held at the Maryland Historical Trust, since the Trust is meant to share the cost of administering this program with the Archives.
• August 7, 2001
• September 25, 2001
• Grant from Maryland Historical Trust to document the history of the State House: mdstatehouse.net
The Archives has made extraordinary progress in documenting the history of the State House.  Every document and image relating to the history of this building is being included in the mdstatehouse.net web site which should go public before the end of this year or the beginning of next year.  Dr. Papenfuse reported that the Archives has discovered that one of the original desks in the Old Senate Chamber is actually a House of Delegates desk.
• Conservation surveys of Annapolis Collection and Peabody Art Collection
Dr. Papenfuse said that the Archives has money from the Legislature this year to perform a conservation survey of the Peabody Collection.  Last year, there was money to perform a survey of all of the artwork in the Annapolis Complex Collection, which was completed.  Within the Peabody Collection there is a huge collection of delightful and beautiful works on paper that has simply been left in boxes in storage and not looked at in terms of their value or how they might be used in exhibitions. The Archives is having these works surveyed and scanned as part of the conservation appraisal.  Dr. Papenfuse showed the Commission thumbnails of those that have been done.  There are 1,180 of these works which will be available on the web in image form for study and reproduction in office areas
• Appraisal of Records
• Report on legally mandated five year appraisal report prepared by DGS - still in progress
• Building Maintenance and Refurbishment
• Update on roof replacement contract and other building maintenance issues
Dr. Papenfuse thanked the Secretary of General Services, Peta Richkus, and her staff for their efforts in getting the Archives a roof that does not leak. When the building was built, the contractor did not put in an escape for the rain and there were insufficient gutters.  In addition, the contractor also put defective stone around the building which has now been covered by copper and made water tight above the brick.
• New Facilities
• Status report on building program
• Status of the Archives Endowment Fund: Interest, Gifts and Matching funds
Dr. Papenfuse said that there is approximately $250,000 in the Endowment Fund. This will provide the Archives with a small amount of matching funds for its Summer Internship Program.  Dr. Papenfuse noted that Dr. Nelson represents the kind of help the Archives has been getting from a lot of different places for its Summer Internship Program.  Dr. Nelson provided matching funds for one intern from St. John's and the Archives paid for another.  Judge Friedman has worked very hard to come up with matching funds to support work on Women Judges and the Archives' women's history project.
• Budget Issues, Present and Future:
• Memo from Eloise Foster regarding hiring freeze and first round of budget cuts
• Archives' budget request for 2003
Dr. Papenfuse noted his and Chris Allan's attendance at a meeting chaired jointly by the Governor's Chief of Staff, Al Collins, and Eloise Foster, who were faced with implementing the Governor's program of budget cuts.  Those attending were told that 30 percent of their General Funds would be withheld this year until decisions could be made about the future.  It was also stated that agencies had to make cuts at a level where vacancies could not be filled.  Mr. Allan reported that the Archives has been asked to turn back in $21,000 of which $14,000 is in General Funds.  Cuts made this fiscal year are going to rotate into Fiscal Year 2003.
• Pending Legislation:
• Legal authority for plats.net as recordation system for state roads plats.
Dr. Papenfuse reported that the Archives, at the suggestion of a court clerk, approached the State Highway Administration (SHA) and suggested that the Archives be the point of recordation for right-of-way plats, if the clerks and the court agree.  The Archives would place these plats on-line at plats.net, saving the state a lot of money.  In order to do this, the law needed to be changed.  Mr. Israel put Dr. Papenfuse's ideas into a draft law which was approved by the clerks and the SHA and was then presented to the Governor's Office.  The Governor's Legislative Office will propose an act to the General Assembly that will allow the Archives to be the registration point for state highway plats.  The Archives will put them on the web and charge a fee for the service.  Dr. Papenfuse stressed that this is a joint project between the Archives, SHA, and the clerks to save the state money and make information more readily available to the public.

At this time, Chairman Bell recognized and welcomed Mr. Bret Schreiber, representing Dr. Brody, and Uma Ahluwalia, representing Alvin Collins, to the meeting.

Next meeting

Adjournment

Approved by the Hall of Records Commission, June 4, 2002
 
 

                                        ____________________________________________________
                                                    The Honorable Robert M. Bell, Chairman
 
 

                                        ____________________________________________________
                                                    Edward C. Papenfuse, Jr., Secretary

Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse
State Archivist

Email: If you have an Email account linked to your WEB browser, click here to activate your mail program to send an inquiry or message to me at archives@mdarchives.state.md.us or contact me at (410) 260-6403.

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