FYI from another List...(finally the federal land patent records site is back up now--quite a valuable research tool which was greatly missed for most of last year). - Joyce H. -----Original Message----- From: Todd Bocik [mailto:bocikt@saic.com] Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2006 2:33 PM To: GENMTD-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [GM] Comments Requested About the Official Federal Land Patent Records Site My name is Todd Bocik. I am the SAIC Project Manager for the development of the scanning and indexing applications as well as the development of the Official Federal Land Patent Records web site. The Bureau of Land Management has maintained the Official Federal Land Patent Records site (www.glorecords.blm.gov) since 1998. The website was down for months, but was made publicly accessible on December 23. Since then, thousands of people have visited the site. With the renewed interest in the website, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have used this website and ask a favor. During the websites history, we have modified the look and feel twice. The first version had very little searching capabilities and few options for you to get the images of the patents. The second version (the one you currently see) has many more searching capabilities geared towards genealogists and those searching for title information. Plus, more image viewing capabilities. The current version has been in place for about 4 years now and we want to make sure that we are not missing any capabilities that you would like to see. We would like you to provide us with features, enhancements or aesthetic changes that would make this site better. There are a few things that we can not change: 1. We can not get data on the site any faster. 2. We can not do different types of documents at this time. The BLM staff are diligently trying to get all the serial records on the website. 3. We can not do additional states. http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/Visitors/StateTime.asp shows the 5 million state patents and land patents that are, or will be, on the website. The General Land Office has very few patents from Texas and the original 13 colonies. 4. We can not do Full Text searches of these documents. The BLM staff are not transcribing the entire documents, but indexing key fields. If you feel uncomfortable posting in this news group and would like to send me an email, please send it to bocikt@saic.com. Also, if there are any other newsgroups or websites I should post this message on, please let me know. Thanks again for your support of the website. I will review the postings with the BLM Project Manager. Based on the budget and current technology, we will get as many new features into the next version as possible. Todd Bocik "Todd Bocik" <bocikt@saic.com>