NATCHEZ &045; Within 60 days, attorneys, police officers, genealogists and others will be able to access Adams County Circuit Court information online 24 hours a day.

Once the Web page is online, the system will allow users to more conveniently access a variety of information. Among other things, that will include marriage and court records; the status of cases; jury duty, voting and passport information; and the amount of prison time an inmate has left.

&uot;It’s costing us $1,500 now, Š but it’ll end up paying for itself in no time&uot; because users wanting to access more than just basic court information will pay a nominal fee per download, said Circuit Clerk M.L. &uot;Binkey&uot; Vines. The fee schedule has not yet been worked out.

Users will register with the site to receive passwords to access different parts of the Web site. That password system and other security measures are now being worked out by Miss-Lou Internet &045; and when that’s done, the site will make its debut.

Computers in the courthouse are nothing new, however. In 2001 the Circuit Clerk’s Office, with the help of Delta Computer Systems, installed a computer the public can use to look up cases and marriage licenses. Then, late last year, a new computer system was installed in the Chancery and Circuit clerks’ offices and the county’s Tax Assessor, Tax Collector and bookkeeping offices to allow them to scan and store documents on computers.

So far, the Circuit Clerk’s Office has scanned documents from January to the present and is now working to scan documents filed prior to January.

Vines said the next step, now that cameras are allowed in courtrooms, will be to install a video camera to tape court proceedings and download them to the Circuit Clerk’s Office Web site. That way, attorneys, the media and other interested parties could see the action for themselves instead of poring through bulky transcripts.

Adams County’s will be the first circuit clerk’s office in the state to debut such an online system, said Alex Griffith, a Web developer for Delta Computer Systems.

Delta Computer Systems is not charging the county anything for the hardware and software services it’s providing, Griffith confirmed. The $1,500 cost is what Miss-Lou Internet is charging.