The following announcement was made by the People for Better Pennsylvania Historical Records Access Facebook page (which I write for as a volunteer records access advocate):
We inquired with the Virginia Genealogical
Society about the digitization of Virginia vital records. Soon
afterwards, this update was posted on their website and we were sent a
link:
The 2012 Virginia General Assembly legislation (SB 660) reduced
the closed period for marriage and death records from 50 to 25 years;
and marriage and death records created prior to 1987 are now available
to the public through orders placed with the Virginia Department of
Health (VDH). The legislation also gave VDH a goal of entering into a
contract with a genealogical indexing company (to index open and closed
vital records, and to link open records to underlying images) by June 1,
2013, and to have an index online on the VDH and Library of Virginia
websites by June 1, 2015.
VDH has been negotiating an indexing
contract or contracts with Ancestry and FamilySearch, and it is expected
to announce a contract before the June 1, 2013 target date. It is
anticipated that Ancestry/ FamilySearch may start to index and film
records in batches, perhaps starting with the oldest first (e.g.,
1853-1896), and once a batch has been scanned and indexed, the original
records in question will be turned over to the Library of Virginia. When
a contract is announced, tentative timetables and initial batches may
be announced, though these will undoubtedly still be subject to change
as the original records are organized and processed.
http://www.vgs.org/component/content/article/43-section-newsflash/86-virginia-vital-records-update
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