Berks County civil court records offline until September

If you need to look up a civil court case in Berks County online right now, a lien on a property, a divorce filing, a lawsuit, you can't. The county's online civil docket search has been unavailable since the middle of June. The Prothonotary's office now plans to replace it with a new system in mid-September, after the launch slipped again from an earlier August 3 target. Until then, the only way to search a civil record is in person at the courthouse in Reading.

The outage covers civil records only. Criminal dockets, which run through a separate statewide system, are not affected, and attorneys can still file cases electronically for day-to-day court business.

What broke, and what's replacing it

Spotlight PA reporter Hanna Holthaus reported on July 15 that the public site went down and that Prothonotary Jonathan Del Collo does not know why it crashed. According to that reporting, the problem was identified June 16, and the office issued no public notice telling residents the system was out.

The site that failed is more than a decade old and was built in-house by the county's IT department. Del Collo is moving the office to a cloud-based platform run by an outside company, Paperless Solutions, which already runs prothonotary systems in other Pennsylvania counties. Per Spotlight PA, the switch is not expected to cost the office extra: e-filing revenue that used to pay for maintaining the old system will instead pay the vendor.

Mid-September is the fourth target. Spotlight PA reported the new system was first set to launch April 1, then July 1, then August 3, slipping each time. In a July 22 update, Del Collo said the latest delay comes from logistical issues: training everyone who uses the system (the Prothonotary's office, the courts, judges, attorneys, and the public), ongoing data conversion and migration, and a few items on the vendor's end. Chief Operating Officer Kevin Barnhardt told Spotlight PA that most software rollouts have fluid go-live dates.

How to look up a civil record until then

You have to go in person. The Prothonotary keeps public terminals at its office in the courthouse.

1. Go to the Prothonotary's Office, Berks County Courthouse, 2nd floor, 633 Court St., Reading.
2. Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The office is closed on federal holidays, Good Friday, Election Day, and the day after Thanksgiving.
3. Ask the counter staff for help searching the civil docket. Bring a name or case number if you have one.
4. Call ahead at 610-478-6970 if you are not sure the record you need is a civil one.

As of this writing, the county's own Prothonotary page still lists the online docket search as if it were working and carries no notice about the outage.

What the Prothonotary handles

The Prothonotary is the elected row officer who serves as the chief clerk and record keeper for civil cases in the county. That covers a lot of everyday paperwork: lawsuits, family court and divorce filings, judgments, and the tax liens and municipal liens that get attached to a property when taxes or bills go unpaid. If you are researching a property before a purchase, chasing down a judgment, or tracing a delinquent-tax claim before a tax sale, the civil docket is where those records live. For how the row offices fit into county government, see our guide to how Berks County government works, and for looking up a parcel by owner or address, see how to search Berks County property records.

What to watch

1. Whether the mid-September launch holds. The date has moved three times already.
2. Whether the new site restores the full record. A vendor migration is only as good as the data that transfers; watch for gaps in older cases once it goes live.
3. Public notice. The office did not tell the public the old system was down. Whether it announces the new one, and any further delay, is worth watching.

We will update this report when the new system launches or the date changes.