Virginia Court of Chancery

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This year the Library of Virginia and circuit court clerks throughout the commonwealth are celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Virginia State Courts Records Preservation Program. This program was created to address the presentation needs of some of the most important records in the state. Virginia's one hundred and twenty circuit court clerk's offices are a treasure trove of state and local history. and contain some of the nation's oldest and most vital legal records. However, these records are also under constant threat from natural and man-made disasters, format and technology obsolescence, and require constant monitoring and caring to insure their presentation for future generations. This effort can only be achieved with cooperation between states and local governments. The Virginia Circuit Courts Records Program is really a model up what a partnership between a locality and the state of Virginia shoudl be. It's been highly effective and it's been one that those of us at the Library of Virginia have valued tremendously, and we certainly hope the circuit court clerks have as well. It's also been a program that's been a model other states have looked to hoping to emulate the successes of the program. The Circuit Court Records Program uses all of the traditional methods and approaches um um... of the archival field. Archivist take the old bundles of court records open them up for the first time in many cases, flat file them, organize them, arrange them, describe them, create finding aids to them, and conserve those that are need of protection. They also um...perform or copy their records for presentation-- microfilming, which is so important should anything ever happened to the paper. Those traditional methods work effectively and have opened up these records to scores of researchers, but even more importantly we've been able to use digital technologies up to make the records available in ways that when the proper began twenty years ago were just unthinkable. The chancery records database and index project is a prime example of that. Accessing digital records online is almost taking for granted today, but it wasn't long process to get there. The Library of Virginia started conducting site surveys in clerk's offices as early as the 1920s to assess the condition of the records in the clerk's care. We then started a program to create photostatic copies of record books to make the important information they contained more widely available to the public. During the nineteen forties and fifties, the Library partnered with clerks and Geological Society of Utah to implement the program that allowed clerks to have their records microfilmed in their offices. A Library-sponsored microfilming program was put in place in the nineteen seventies and eighties which allowed courts to have the historic record books microfilmed and also allow them to set up a system to film their day-forward recordings. Still, much more was needed to improve access to records and to protect their longevity. In 1989 and 1990, the Library of Virginia and the Virginia State Historical Records Advisory Board completed surveys of repositories of historical record in the commonwealth. The findings revelaed that the greatest need for preservation measures in the state is in the circuit court clerks offices. Backed by these findings former state archivist, WIllis H. Manor, the Virginia Court Clerks Association, and key legislators built support for the passage of the bill that would establish a Circuit Court Records Preservation Program. The circuit court records preservation or CCRP Program, is funded by the collection of a $1.50 records preseervation fee attached to all land transaction recordings, and it carries out three main functions: processing, indexing, and reformatting of all records transferred to the Library of Virginia; maintaining and duplicating Circuit Court security microfilm; and allocating records preservation grants to the clerk's offices. The first grnats were awarded to clerks' offices in 1992 and directly addressed the preservation issues identified in the initial surveys of the clerk's offices. These often pertain to the most basic needs of maintaining their building structures. Many court houses have been victim to fire flood over the years, resulting in burned or water-damaged records, but the risk to the buildings themsleves needed to be mitigated before any of the records could be identified for individual treatment. "The program here's always been a cooperative program between the Library and the clerks. uh... My first exposure to the grant program uh... that portion of the preservation program was through review of the grants that came in quarterly to the Library. Some of the issues that they those grants were addressing were long-time issues of record preservation and access. It surprised me that the very earliest grants that we got were for security and fire suppression systems and video monitoring of the record room. Those were important things for the clerks to be interested in, for sure." In some cases it has been determined that a locality simply cannot provide an adequate security storange for their precious early manuscript records. In this case, the Library of Virginia offers its state-of-the-art presentation storage facilities-- the downtown Richmond location and the Virginia State Records Center located in the Eastern Henrico County. It currently holds over 25,000 cubic feet of archival paper records Storage of archival records is provided without cost to localities that require it, and the buildings are staffed by archivists to process and index the records. Since the inception of the program, archivists have preserved hundreds of thousands of pages of Circuit Court Records. The Library also maintains a media vault, that stores over 250,000 reels of security microfilm, provides duplication services for the clerk's offices, and insures the long-term preservation of Circuit Court Records. The State Records Center also houses a blast freezer, which is essential to address immediate treatment requirements of wet and pest-ridden records. This equipment has saved countless records from further damage. In the past, these records would have simply been lost. "I think one of the benefits and the strengths of the program really is in its flexibility. We have a number of clerks who have decided for whatever reason to keep all the records in their offices, and we certainly can help the clerks that way--through the the actual grant program. We also have a lot of clerks who decide to send a lot of their historical, archival records to the archives in Richmond, and we have a team of professional archivists who will work on those records. So I think what one of the real benefits, to one of the real strong points of the program itself, is that we can help clerks however they choose to preserve their permanent records." Preservation work is also taking place in the Library of Virginia's downtown facility at 800 East Broad Street. There is a full-service conservation lab, staffed by the Etherington Conservation Services, which provides the Library with ready access to knowledgable professional staff that regularly performs treatments on Circuit Court items slated for reformatting. Cleaning, repairing, and tape removal all ensure the future of life of the documents, while also greatly improving image quality while the documents are filmed and scanned. A full range of high quality microfilming services is provided on site by Backstage Library Works, a firm that also serves as the Library's digital reformatting vendor. Digital reformatting has been a major part of court records preservation since 2005. Thanks to the Library of Virginia's Chancery Record Index and and digital Chancery Inniative, a mass court records digitization project unique amongst a state archives. To date, over seven billion Chancery documents from fifty-seven localities have been scanned. The grant program also provides scanning of additional records in clerks' offices. An example is the is the Land Record Collection in Portsmouth Virginia. "We had a grant for over $147,000 that allowed us to digitize our records from 1857 to 1970. Which made us, at that point, have every record that we have in the land records side of the house in a digital format. We could not have done that without the assistance from the grant program and the Library of Virginia. Our citizens have benefited greatly from this, as well as many of the title companies and the attorneys who do land record recordations within our office. It tied in very nicely with secure remote access, which was mandated by the Virginia General Assembly. And so many of our customers who now have access to my land records-- through secure remote access-- they are able to search from home all of our records, from the beginning of book one to the current." The online Chancery Records Index has also proved a very useful tool for researchers to identify record collections that have been processed and indexed, but not yet digitally scanned. These records, once located through the index, can be viewed in their original manuscript form in the Library of Virginia's secure manuscript reading rooms. If they have been microfilmed, they can also be viewed on digital film readers in the spacious, modern microfilm reading rooms. The Library of Virginia has an unparalleled collection of city and county microfilm. It is only part of the reason why it is one of the most heavily visited state archives in the country, drawing researchers from around the world. But there is still so much more work to be done to make all the hisotrical records in Virginia readily available to those who need them. "Going forth, the Circuit Court Records Preservation Grants Program that's going to continue to be indispensable to clerk's offices as they fulfill their mission to preserve the public record. And without the help of the Library of Virginia, clerks will not be able to meet needs of the public as well as they could with the program. And that public includes title examiners to use the records for business reasons, geneologists, history enthusiasts, and scholars. All of those groups of people have used the records that have been preserved by the grants program over the past twenty years. And that need is going to continue. One of the reasons it's going to continue is becasue the work is not done because there are so many items, for instance, that have to be conserved. There are older court records that are very valuable, that shed a light on the past, that haven't been conserved yet. In clerk's offices around the state, in many ways, while much has been done to work is just beginning." The Circuit Court Records Preservation Program will continue to face many challenges ahead, such as keeping up with changing technologies and responding to natural disastrous while still maintaining traditional conservation standards. Working together, the Library of Virginia and many dedicated circuit court clerks across the commonwealth are up to the task.