The Bureau of Land Management’s new version of the General Land Office Records (GLO Records) website is now online at https://glorecords.blm.gov/s/.

I liked the old website. It was easy to use. The data was laid out well. The different pages, tabs, etc., made sense. The color scheme was nice. Was it perfect? No. Nothing ever is. But it was very good and any complaints I had about it were fairly minor.

The “new” GLO Records website does not impress. At least not today.

I chose “Advanced Search” and conducted a few name searches. I found the people I expected. The search function worked well sometimes but not other times. I think it worked better with Chrome than Safari.

Many researchers who are unfamiliar with Federal land records will be easily tempted into entering a state and county and then be very disappointed when they “don’t find anything.” Experienced researchers know that those fields should “always” be left blank because you don’t know the state and county in which the patentee (the person who received the patent) chose to locate the land — and that state and county may have nothing to do with the warrantee (the person to whom the land warrant was issued in cases of patents issued on the basis of military service). Maybe it won’t matter, however. A search using a first name and surname with the “wrong” state resulted in the “right” patent being listed first out of 1,124,751 results. LOL. Only the first result was actually the correct result even though the “wrong” state is never mentioned in patent or associated data. (No, I was not searching for Smith.)

Saving a “results” webpage for one individual as a PDF resulted in page 1 (useless), page 2 (all the data), and page 3 (useless). I know how to only save page 2 as a PDF so that was annoying but not a big problem.

Downloading a PDF of the land patent image was painless and fast.

The “Related Documents” tab loaded quickly. “Related Documents” means documents for people to whom patents were issued in the same township, range, and section as your person of interest. However, there is no text to tell the researcher this, so I can imagine some people might think the “people” were related instead of the land being simply nearby to their person of interest. (Yes, of course, sometimes the people might also be related or from the same area back home.)

The “Search Using the Map” feature does not work. At least not today.

I did not log in with Login.gov so I have no comment on account features at this time.

It may be that the “new” GLO Records database/website is undergoing a “slow roll out” starting with basic features with additional features and content to be loaded over time. That approach allows for testing of the structure by real users in real time to make sure the current structure and data are stable. Then additional features are added in stages until it is all there. I make this observation because – several years ago – there was a different Federal agency that launched a new and improved website/database and it, too, was not impressive at launch – and was not impressive for months and months thereafter. Slowly, however, bells and whistles were added back in and now is pretty darn good. I hope that the same thing will eventually be said about the “new” GLO Records website.

That said, however, be sure to click the “contact us” link on the new GLO website and submit a “BLM Public Help Desk ticket” so that BLM learns about the problems you have with the new website. They need to hear from you.