Land Patent Source Formatting

Question

What would be the best way to format a source record for data coming from the General Land Office Records?  I know that it is not desirable to use URLs in sources, so am not sure which of the following would be best:

1) No URL:

"U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Patents", Accession #AL4960__.279.  State: Alabama, Document Type: State Volume Patent, Issue Date: 11/28/1900, Name on Document: George B Woodham.

2) Details + High level URL:

"U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Patents", Accession #AL4960__.279.  State: Alabama, Document Type: State Volume Patent, Issue Date: 11/28/1900, Name on Document: George B Woodham.  [https://glorecords.blm.gov/search/default.aspx#searchTabIndex=2]

3) Details + Specific URL:

"U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Patents", Accession #AL4960__.279.  State: Alabama, Document Type: State Volume Patent, Issue Date: 11/28/1900, Name on Document: George B Woodham. http://glorecords.blm.gov/details/patent/default.aspx?accession=AL4960__.279&docClass=STA&sid=3l544gjo.ejv

4) Specific URL only:

http://glorecords.blm.gov/details/patent/default.aspx?accession=AL4960__.279&docClass=STA&sid=3l544gjo.ejv

Thanks for any suggestions!

Answer 1

4 wouldn't be a good citation. Any of the first 3 would. Evidence Explained uses one like #2 or #3. Either is acceptable. Your syntax is a bit different from EE which would be more like:

Bureau of Land Management, "Land Patent Search," database, General Land Office Records," (www.glorecords.blm.gov/search/default.aspx : accessed <your date of access>), entry for George B Woodham (Alabama) accession #AL4960__.279.

You can include the date of the patent.

#2 lets other find it by doing the search on the name and location. #3 would be OK but if the link fails you have to figure out what the search URL is. In any case, either of those would be fine.

Comments

A general guide from EE is at https://web.archive.org/web/20150906090234/https://www.evidenceexplained.com/sites/default/files/documents/11.1.pdf

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Thanks for the quick response!  I have been trying to look at styles in Evidence Explained but their web site has been down.  I am going to go with your recommendation and include the date of the patent as part of the citation.

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If you have a county, add that to the location. e.g. (<county>, Alabama).

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Here's the current iteration with your recommendations.  I removed the state reference after the name since it is part of the land office designation.

Bureau of Land Management, "Land Patent Search," database, General Land Office Records," (www.glorecords.blm.gov/search/default.aspx : accessed 22 August 2018), entry for George B Woodham accession #AL4960__.279, Land Office: Montgomery, Alabama, Issue Date: 11/28/1900.

Thanks also to the reference about the EE guide details - this will really help me with some of my source formatting questions!

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That looks good. Its gotten to where our copy of EE sits on a table where my wife and I can both look at it. I'm going to have to go through a lot of profiles of my ancestors and get them into better shape citation wise. New ones I try to do them right.