Screening the Papers of Baltimore's Mayors

Abstract

June 19, 1 96 1, the Records Management Division of the city of Baltimore began an interesting project screening the correspondence files, 18821947, of former mayors. The purpose of this screening was to dispose of unnecessary records and at the same time put more of our historical records in proper order. There are various reasons why this was done. First, in order to make more space available for city Welfare Department's donable food distribution program it was imperative that the correspondence be moved to another building for storage. Since there were 360 boxes, each containing a cubic foot of records, their mass had to be reduced to store them in any space available. Second, I knew that the director of the Municipal Museum considered these files to be of some historical value. I myself did not attempt an evaluation of the correspondence at first. This was done later by two members of the Records Committee and me. I did, however, recommend that if the files were to be moved and refiled in new boxes, they should be screened and only the records of historical significance should be refiled. Thus those papers which proved to be valuable would be separated from the useless material and historical research would be facilitated. The records management program in the city of Baltimore functions under ordinance no. 1096, approved by the Mayor on June 4, 1954. The ordinance created the position of Records Management Officer and provided for a Records Committee of seven members the director of the Department of Legislative Reference (who is chairman), the comptroller, the treasurer, the city solicitor, the city auditor, the director of the Department of Public Works, and the director of the Municipal Museum of Balti-