Evening star., 1936-03-14

WASHINGTON NOTE
SOUGHT IN ARCHIVES
Chief of Classification Division Digs for
Particular Paper in Mountain of
Documents to Be Preserved.

about 30.0o0.000 pieces of paper and
100000 index cards.
In day the three men are able to
discover the contents of about 80
cases without making any attempt to
straighten them out.
1t takes a Sherlock Holmes, plus
DR.. Watson, the violin. the pipe and
the needle, to do some of the discov-
cry work called for by the state of
some archives. On the Food Admins
tration job the men have to go
through some of it page by page and
the rest keeps them hopping about,
hoping to find the next file case, which
probably is hidden in the furthermost
corner.
They will not be a bit surprised, but
they may be delayed and temporarily
defeated in the future to find strange
ABX and XXY-l-2 hieroglyphics on
filing cases. The symbols once meant
everything to the original fler, but
they won't mean a thing but trouble
to archive men.
The buildings stacks we're designed
to accommodate about 100000 cubic
feet of material. Hill estimates that
that would amount to about 1882 ,000,-
900 separate documents! After that
estimate, he adds calmly, "our work
will never end"
He himself once spent three years
on classification job involving only
900 bundles of papers, so he knows
the patience and the length of time
involved.
THE papers to be classified are ex-
tremely soiled and many need re-
pairs.
A tremendous amount of duplication
and of papers of no value, which can
be destroyed, will he found, Hill be-
lieves. No decision has been reached
yet as to what period a Government
department will consider it necessary
to retain papers in its own files before
sending them to the Archives Build
ing or whether duplicates may be
sent over Immediately.
The most glamorous archives are,
of course. the early ones-many in
manuscript, and the very famous ones
such as Lincoln's Emancipation Proc
lamation. For every one of these,
however, there are millions Of routine
papers, such as the food allowance
reports for individual citizens-so
much sugar, so little flour-found in
the food administration files. Yet
many of them may have historic ana
research value.
Hill is native of Illinois. but has
also called New Mexico and New Jer-
sey home" His first experience with
archives was in Spain, where the Car
negie Institute sent him to classify
and prepare descriptive catalogue Of
documents in the Papeles Procedentes
de Cuba relating to the history of the
United States and deposited in the
Archivo General de Indias at Seville.
That was the three-year job-much
of it spent in a cellar working room,
surrounded by bundles of papers scat
tered aimlessly about on the floor.
Returning from Spain, he taught at
Columbia and at the University of
New Mexico. Then in 1920, he came
East to join the State Department and
did financial work as a member of
the Nicaraguan High Commission.
Ironically enough, this man so inter-
ested in preservation Of records, saw
every bit of his eight years of Mica
raguan work destroyed by earthquake
and fire.
HILL went to Spain again, 1928.
1880. for the Library of Con-
gress, this time to make Photographic
copies of materials, and in 1888 he
edited the Journals of the Continental
Congress, 1787-1789 for the Library.
In May. 1885, he came to the Archives.
In the last six months he has been
studying the entire Government sys-
tenn and set-up.
If some years from now you push
through high leather doors, walk into
the beautifully paneled reference
room in the Archives Building (the
search room, they call it, and find
listed, in card index or some other
system, just the document of the In
terror Department in 1929 or State
Department 1889 that you need, hand
in request for it as the round desk,
have it shot downstairs through pneu-
matte tubes and the document sent
up, Roscoe r. Hill probably will be
largely responsible.
He is researcher, who makes pos
Sible others research.
The appalling job is just about to
begin, but he doesn't seem the least
appalled,, in fact, he's very hopeful of
finding that particular pet paper Of
his own.