| Simply the most important event
in modern Mormon publishing. |
| General
information |
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| Publication
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Selected Collections from
the Archives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
is a two-volume set of DVDs (74 total) published by BYU Press. Edited
and produced under the direction of Richard E. Turley Jr., managing
director of the church's Family and Church History Department.
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| Scope |
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An enormous collection of digitally
reproduced documents from the LDS Church Archives, including the Joseph
Smith papers, Kirtland high council minutes, revelation manuscripts,
Brigham Young letterbooks, Joseph F. Smith diaries, letterbooks, and
incoming correspondence. For a complete list, see Selected
Collections Alphabetically. |
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| Images |
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Not searchable—images only. |
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| Blackouts |
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Some documents and portions of
douments are blacked out §. |
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| Price |
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Sold only in sets. $1,299 + $50
shipping for both sets. $699 for one (or the other) set + $30 shipping.
To order, go to: BYU
Studies. |
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| Evaluation |
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| Privacy,
copyright, and public domain |
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Publication of these documents is a stunning reversal
of church policy which has barred access to many collections, even to
faithful LDS scholars, for over two decades. That the collections were
released at the very end of 2002, suggests changes in copyright laws
may have had something to do it. As in 1890, the "law of the land"
seems to have produced a providential change of policy. The next major
event will be the hard copy publication of the complete Joseph Smith
papers in 30+ volumes beginning, I understand by 2005. Camelot rocks!
(as my colleagues at work would say). |
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| Blackouts |
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Understandably, the church is concerned about the release
of some documents and portions of others. These items are blacked out
on the CDs (the originals have not been damaged). |
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The printed documentation, under the name
of Richard E. Turley Jr., explains: |
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¶ |
[5] This publication has been made possible,
to a large extent, by the careful balancing of factors that have stood
as barriers in the past to distribution of materials from the Church
Archives. These fators have previously been describged in the general
introduction to The Journals of George Q. Cannon series: |
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¶ |
Preparing the journals of church leaders for publication
poses serious ethical challenges. The work of these leaders, by its
very nature, involves them in many maters that are sacred, private,
or confidential. Matters of great sacredness deserve reverence. Divulging
some kinds of information may violate principles of privacy. And persons
who confess to religious leaders or communicate other information
in a confidential setting expect that leaders will maintain their
confidences.
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… [W]e in the Church Historical Department seek to
honor these principles while also making as much information as possible
available to the public and clearly indicating any omissions with
ellipses or notes.
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¶ |
Consistent with these principles, a committee
of senior archivists from the Church Archives, after careful review,
selected a small number of passages in this set for omission. Decisions
to omit or retain specific passages took into account many relevant
factors, including whether information at one time considered confidential
has subsequently become a matter of public record. The omitted portions,
ranging in length from occasional words to entire documents, represent
far less than one percent of the original texts that make up this set.
There have been no silent omissions—all items deleted appear as
blacked-out words, sentences, paragraphs, or pages. While material has
been redacted from [6] this digitized version for commercial distribution,
the original materials used to produce these images have not themselves
been altered. |
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The initial BYU Studies website announcement
gave the number of blackouts—I believe it was 68. Watch this website
for notices of blackouts as they are … unearthed. (Please send
volume, disk, and page number to [email protected].) |
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| Critique |
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| Musings |
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With such a vast array of materials,
who's to complain about this or that collection not being included?
Well, the following remarks are musings, not complaints. |
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| Brother,
where art thou? |
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John Taylor, George Q. Cannon, and Wilford
Woodruff are completely missing. Is this solely due to time and space
constraints or were there copyright considerations? |
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| Wilford |
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Wilford expressly willed his voluminous journals
to four sons with instructions to publish them. There is no question
that the family owned the literary rights, even though the church had
physical possession. In 1980, family representatives (presidents of
all family branch organizations) contracted Signature Books to publish
the journals. Copies are nearly impossible to come by nowadays, but
the 9-volume set is available on the New Mormon Studies CD. Signature
should look into the possibility of reproducing the journals digitally. |
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| Joseph
F. |
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Did attorneys submit any findings to the authorities
regarding copyright for documents now in church possession that were
produced by these brethren? Presumably they would have done so for the
others, especially Joseph F. Smith, whose family organization is large
and strong. Did that organization agree to publication of their ancestor's
personal diaries and correspondence? |
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| John |
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Is there a John Taylor family organization? |
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| George
Q. |
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Is the Cannon family oganization involved
in the production of The Journals of George Q. Cannon series?
What is the family's position on publication of this all-important document? |
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| Documentation |
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Accompanying the disks is a 12-page document—10
pages of text—allocated as follows: 1.5 pages of introduction;
2 pages of thanks, appreciation, and grateful acknowledgments; 1.5 pages
explaining blackout policy; 6 pages of contents. The printed contents
is painfully inadquate (see TOC below). |
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The electronic contents are easy
to navigate if not always completely accurate. More Information links
provide interesting background on each collection. It is too bad, though,
that project leaders didn't see fit to toss in a couple more disks with
the full registries already available in electronic format for many,
if not most, of the collections in the set. Because they can be searched,
these registries would have eliminated my two gripes (below) and greatly
enhanced the usability of the set. |
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| Gripes |
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The printed table of contents
is lousy and there is no index, which means you don't always know which
disk to insert. |
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| Button,
button, who's got the button? |
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Four important collections
that span two or more disks (Brigham, Joseph F., George A., and Franklin
D. Richards) are insufficiently detailed in the printed Contents. You
want to look at Brigham's letters for 1869? Go fish. They are somewhere
in disks 21–25 of the first volume. The odds of your finding the
pea are better with the others, because they only involve two disks
each, but simply adding one level of detail to these collections would
have eliminated the guesswork as far as disks are concerned. |
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have begun to address this problem in Selected
Collections Alphabetically |
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candle and the basket |
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Even a rudimentary index generated
from names and topics in disk contents files, would have been better
than nothing, and much more helpful than the printed Contents. |
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| Final
words of praise |
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The imaging is superior. In fact, it is probably
easier to decipher most documents on DVDs than in the flesh, because
you can click an image to instantly magnify it. Kudos to the technical
team. But highest praise and thanks to those who selected the collections
and those who developed and approved the editorial policies for the
project. This is really a landmark event all can be proud of. |
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| Looking
forward |
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Now that the ice has been broken, is it too
much to hope for Selected Collections: Part 2? Will BYU follow
suit with the Whitney papers, Joseph Smith Sr. family papers, and Abraham
H. Cannon diaries? Will Signature contact the Huntington, the Bancroft,
the Utah State Historical Society, the Beinecke, Harvard, Princeton
… I'm getting light headed, so I'll close now. |
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| Bug
file |
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| Description |
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Bugs are a necessary evil, especially in prevalent in
first version releases. They range from mundane typos to exhilarating
system crashes. (Fortunately, I have found none that are particularly
serious.) Bugs are important for job security. They are tracked to be
fixed in the next release, when new bugs are introduced. |
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| Finished
- contents |
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May pertain only to external drives. (I don't
have an internal drive to test.) A DOS window opens on the startup of
each disk with the ominous message, "Bad command or file name".
The window, which persists even after the disk is ejected, serves no
purpose so far as the user is concerned, and should be automatically
dismissed when the disk has loaded (if it has to be visible at all). |
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| Incorrect
journal listing |
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According to the printed Contents, 1:26 contains
"Joseph F. Smith Journal, 1856–1881, 1883, 1909, and 1912
(MS 1325 Boxes 1–5)." I don't believe the department ever
has had diaries for November 1858–March 1860 or April 27, 1876–December
31, 1878. At any rate, they are not on the disk. |
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| Disk
1:24 |
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Displays the name Vol_1_DVD_24, which is nice, but the
first table of contents on the disk does not correspond to entries at
the next level. |
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| Title
bar hyphens |
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Title bars can't handle en dashes (as in 1805–1844).
They appear as vertical bars. Use hyphens instead. |
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| Disk
names |
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The Windows Explorer name of 1:29 is Vol_2_DVD_29. Change
Vol_2 to Vol_1. Many disks display unhelpful names like 021215_2235. |
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Selected
Collections
Alphabetically
Home
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