ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS

become a function of the Superintendent of Public Buildings and
Grounds.) Basically this staff does exactly what it did in 1935. We
produce our records for searchers who come in person; we answer the
inquiries of those who reach us by mail and by telephone. But there
are many more records, as I have pointed out, and many more searchers.
In some cases we can do more with less help than before: we have had
for years a continuous process photostat camera whose rate of pro-
duction is considerably greater than that of the old hand-operated
machine; and now we can often substitute microfilm, the quickest and
cheapest kind of photography, and a process which was hardly known
in 1935. The thousands of volumes of county and church records which
we now have on film could not possibly have been made by photostat.
We have five microfilm cameras, designed for various purposes, and
ten readers. In the repair room, the substitution of lamination for the
silking process which we used until 1942 has made it possible for us
to protect our most heavily circulated records against the wear and tear
of constant handling. The speed of the process, however, is only one
of its many advantages over silk. On the other hand, there is no auto-
matic way to bind books, or to label shelves or to prepare accessions
lists or catalogue cards.

Reference work has been made quicker and more certain by the
preparation of thousands of index cards to our early records, especially
those having to do with the settlement of estates, military service and
vital statistics. Of the twelve publications of the Hall of Records Com-
mission, ten (catalogues, calendars, indexes) were prepared to help the
searcher use our records. In addition there have been mimeographed
bulletins to list smaller collections and to describe our finding aids.
From the county courthouses we have collected and rehabilitated dis-
carded but useful land and probate indexes, and we have prepared
photostatic or microfilm copies of current indexes in order to keep pace
with our increased holdings of such records. Publication Number 13,
now being prepared, will guide the user to the historical county records
of Maryland, those in the Hall of Records as well as those in the
courthouses and elsewhere. Two other publications deal respectively
with the history of the buildings of the State of Maryland at Annapolis
and of the County Courthouses.

From time to time, we have assumed other tasks not enumerated
specifically in the Act establishing the Hall of Records but certainly
within its general province. Governor Lane asked us to prepare the