US—Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800–1955

rhaynes3925504

When indexing Land Management Tract Books the instructions are unclear on several points. 1) do you always use the date of sale or do you use the most recent date regardless of what that date represents?

2) Do you index the names that are grayed out and often hard to read. They are sometimes a duplicate of a name of someone who will show up as an indexable name with a different date but sometimes they are unique names. They are usually written smaller than normal entries and off to the side.

The instructions are unclear about these situations and people are all over the place on how they handle them.

Melissa S Himes

This is a question from March. I think they have enhanced the instructions since then. This is why it is very good to ask questions, or bring up specific points about the projects in this group. Things can be changed when they are unclear!

For the dates - the field help now says:

If multiple dates were given for the same transaction, index the "Date of Sale." If the date of sale was not given, index the "Date of Entry."

If the month was not recorded or was written as a variation of the word "unknown," press Ctrl+B to mark this field blank.

You would not use the most recent date on these records.

For those small pencilled in names the instructions now say:

• If any person's name is listed in the "By Whom Patented" column, the names should be indexed in the Other's name fields.
• If 2 names were listed in either the "Name of Purchaser" or "Name of Entryman" columns for the same transaction, index the second name in the Other's name fields.
• If multiple principal names or other names were recorded for the same transaction, create additional entries to index all combinations of the names.
• Not all transactions follow the columns exactly. Some entries are small and take up only half of the row; others are large and spread across multiple columns. These entries should also be indexed.
• Many images in this project will not include other's names, event city, or event county. These fields will often be marked blank in this project.

The field helps for Other's Given and Surname fields also further explain how to index names on the sides:

"If any person's name is listed in the "To Whom Patented" column, the given names should be indexed in this field.

If 2 names were listed in the "Name of Purchaser" column for the same transaction, index the second given names in this field.

If any person's name is listed as the seller, the given names should be indexed in this field."

Maile L

Mod note- moved to Indexing category