Over the past weekend when none of the Library of Virginia subscribers was
in the office to take notice of the discussion of clerks and county records,
a good many inexact comments got posted that may be misleading.

I do not know all the answers, but I will make some inquiries and try to get
more details.

For the nonce, all the deed, order, and will books and some other county
records compiled prior to 1865 have been microfilmed and are available at
the Library of Virginia and elsewhere. Nobody needs permission from anybody
to consult them. Post-1865 records of a similar sort for some counties have
also been filmed. Consult the Library of Virginia's web site at
http://www.lva.lib.va.us and click open the index to the letter C and look
for the county records site.

There are many other classes of local records that the clerks of the courts
or the clerks of the cities and counties preserve, although some of those
clerks have transferred their holdings to the archives at the Library of
Virginia. In most instances, I suspect, the difficulties that some
researchers have encountered in getting access to records involved some of
these documents, which include suit papers, other unbound records, and the
like.

Virginia law has always appeared to me (a non-lawyer) to be at war with
itself. The public records act and the Virginia Freedom of Information Act
(why does everybody always assume that the Feds control everything?) specify
that these are public documents to which the citizens of Virignia have
access. However, the laws also make the clerks custodians of those records,
with the result that some clerks do not make it easy for the public to get
that access. I think people (citizens of Virginia, certianly) should be
politely persistent in pursuit of their right to consult public documents.

Freedom of Information actions to gain access to documents should be
necessary only in cases involving documents about which there is some
question as to the legal status of the records, whether they are privileged
or classed as working papers; but in practice it does not always work out
that way.

In some other instances, portions of a run of a court's or a county's or a
city's records may be closed for archival processing, but that is (or ought
to be) always a temporary thing.

I will try to find out some more and let you know. In the meantime, please
don't assume that an experience in one place with one group of records
governs what may happen with another group of records or in another place.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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