The Maryland State Archives is Out of Space

The following teaser is from acn.liveauctioneers.com:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) – The Maryland State Archives collection is among the largest in the country with nearly 400 years of history, including Colonial-era paintings, keepsakes of the state’s governors, and thousands of land, court and genealogy records.
With all that history, the Archives has run out of space.

The agency first filled its Annapolis headquarters to capacity in 2000, then leased and filled a warehouse. It leased a second warehouse and a third before brokering a deal to store some of its property at the Baltimore City Archives.

All of the facilities are now full, and state archivists have been pushing for more space since 2005.

Agency officials say that the lack of space and “substandard” conditions at the warehouses have damaged some of the older items, and that employees are trying to avoid losing their grip on history.

“I hope that as the economy turns around we’re going to be able to request some more conservation money,” said Deputy State Archivist Tim Baker. “We really need to finally own up to our responsibility to take care of these treasures and store them adequately.”

Baker said well-maintained archives serve a valuable purpose in a democracy.

Read the full article.

Read more: http://acn.liveauctioneers.com/index.php/features/general-interest/7537-maryland-state-archives-running-out-of-storage-space#ixzz1zWPjdZH3

About Leland Meitzler

Leland K. Meitzler founded Heritage Quest in 1985, and has worked as Managing Editor of both Heritage Quest Magazine and The Genealogical Helper. He currently operates Family Roots Publishing Company (www.FamilyRootsPublishing.com), writes daily at GenealogyBlog.com, writes the weekly Genealogy Newsline, conducts the annual Salt Lake Christmas Tour to the Family History Library, and speaks nationally, having given over 2000 lectures since 1983.

One Reply to “The Maryland State Archives is Out of Space”

  1. I think that the archives should have ancestry scan their records that would help.

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