Mr. Kirkland,
Thank you for your inquiry regarding the Brunswick Co. chancery causes. Over the last 10 years, the LVA has endeavored to digitally reformat chancery causes with priority placed on those localities that have not been previously reformatted (microfilmed). To date, we've succeeded in digitizing 63 localities, an average of a little over 6 per year, for a total of 10 million images.
The financial support for this unique project, and the other work of the Circuit Court Records Preservation program (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/agencies/CCRP/), is generated through a $1.50 from local circuit court clerks' land instrument recordation fee. As you can imagine, since 2008 that funding has been severely curtailed resulting in a necessary slow down in the reformatting work. We are now only able to do about 20% of the reformatting previously possible, a sad reality of the economic situation. However, we remain committed to this effort and will continue (and increase) as funding allows.
Specifically regarding the Brunswick County chancery records, those materials have never been reformatted and are only available in the original at the LVA. They, along with other original format records, are slated to be digitized as resources and staffing permit. The preparation, transport, scanning, quality control, and posting of digitized chancery images is a time consuming and labor intensive effort. For instance, each Hollinger box of records contains approximately 1,000 digital images. Accordingly, each locality takes many months of work to complete.
We greatly appreciate your interest in this work and your desire to have more materials made available online. Rest assured that we share this desire and will continue to progress toward our goal of making all of Virginia's surviving pre-1912 chancery court records freely available for public access.
If you have additional questions about this or the other projects of the CCRP, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Vincent T. Brooks
Senior Local Records Archivist
The Library of Virginia: Archives of the Commonwealth
800 E. Broad St.
Richmond, VA 23219
804/692-3525 (voice) **NEW**
804/692-2277 (fax)
Website: http://www.lva.virginia.gov
Blog: Out of the Box
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