Library of Virginia
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[edit] Address and Contact Info
Address: 800 E. Broad St., Richmond, VA 23219-8000.
Telephone and fax: (804) 692-3500. Fax (804) 692-3594.
E-mail: sandra.treadway@lva.virginia.gov.
Web page: http://www.lva.lib.va.us.
State Librarian: Sandra Gioia Treadway
Online Finding Aid: http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whatwehave/index.htm
Archivists (principal contacts for advice on the collection):
[edit] Hours and usage restrictions
Monday through Saturday, 9-5 pm.
[edit] Collection Summary
The Library of Virginia (LVA) is a major research library containing more than 808,459 bound volumes; 678,789 public documents; 410,331 microforms, including 45,684 reels of microfilmed newspapers; 308,916 photographs and other pictorial materials; 101.8 million manuscript items and records; and several hundred thousand prints, broadsides, and newspapers. The strength of the collection lies in the fields of Virginia history, government, and culture. The library collection includes many early travel accounts and the first printed records of the colony as well as thousands of works by Virginia authors. A fine corpus of Confederate imprints supports an outstanding collection of Civil War history. A comprehensive collection of published local history and genealogy supplements the archives’ extensive county and city circuit court records, including original deeds, wills, order books, case files, and loose court papers dating from the 1600s through the 1940s. The official repository for all state records, the archives provide access to the surviving records of Virginia’s colonial and revolutionary-era governments, the governor’s office and the executive branch, the General Assembly, constitutional conventions from 1776 to 1969, the state judiciary, and many independent state agencies. Manuscript holdings also include a wide variety of personal papers, business records, genealogical notes and charts, family Bibles, church records, organizational records, and maps. Online catalogs to the collections are available at the library’s web site, and printed inventories and guides to many of the library’s major collections are available.
The Library of Virginia’s web site provides efficient and extensive access to research materials. Among the databases available on the library’s web site are Revolutionary War bounty records, legislative petitions, Confederate pension applications, Board of Public Works maps, and indexes to Virginia estate and probate records before 1800 and to marriages and obituaries. Other online collections include Land Office patents and grants, family Bible records, the survey reports of the Virginia Colonial Records Project, and the WPA Virginia Historical Inventory of photographs, maps, and detailed reports documenting the architectural, cultural, and family histories of thousands of 18th- and 19th-century buildings in communities across Virginia. A strength of the digital collection is 20th-century Virginia history, with the World War I History Questionnaires, the WPA Virginia Writers Project life histories, and the photographs of the 1939 World’s Fair Collection and the Army Signal Corps’ Hampton Roads Embarkation Series, 1942–46.
[edit] Usage Discussion
Suggestions for approaching the material:
They have microfilm available through inter-library loan for some of their collection. Check with staff for details. Requests for print-outs from microfilm require a $25-30 service fee that also includes three pages of printing. Additional print-outs are $3 per page. If travel to the repository is not possible, it may be cheaper to hire one of the free-lance researchers they list on their site.
Housing and getting by for less in the area:
