[This was originally published on May 21, 2018, on the Church History Library’s blog The Historical Record.]
June 2018 marks 40 years since President Spencer W. Kimball announced that the priesthood could be conferred on “all worthy male members of the Church” (Official Declaration 2). The announcement provided new opportunities to members of African descent throughout the world. Men could now be ordained to the priesthood, and men and women could participate in individual and family temple ordinances.
In conjunction with the First Presidency’s “Be One” event (scheduled for June 1, 2018), which will commemorate the events of June 1978, the Church History Library is pleased to present several original historic documents from black Latter-day Saint history from May 21 through August 4, 2018. The exhibit is free and open to the public during the library’s normal hours—Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with extended hours to 8:00 p.m. on Thursday evenings, and 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Saturdays.
We invite all to visit the exhibit, learn more about the rich history of blacks in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and leave a personal message in the commemorative guest books. These guest books will be preserved in the library’s permanent collections as a record of this 40th anniversary celebration.
This post identifies each of the 16 items on display, providing links to digital images where available and call numbers for the Church History Catalog. It also provides links to additional information about the creators of these significant documents.
Public historian Sheila Brennan rightly observed that “public digital humanities work requires an intentional decision from the beginning of the project that identifies, invites in, and addresses audience needs in the design, as well as the approach and content, long before the outreach for a finished project begins.” This post presents recent initiatives in the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City as an example of using multiple digital technologies to deliver the right records to the right persons, even at times when the recipient did not know that she needed the record.
My Particular Public, My Library (and Me)
I’ve always found it more helpful to attempt to serve particular publics rather than a general one. The Church History Library is the institutional archive for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith with nearly 16 million members living in countries around the world who speak more than 100 languages. Daily religious practice among Latter-day Saints engages history in multiple ways. The Church itself was organized in 1830, and the histories of its founder Joseph Smith and of its founding scriptural texts (of which The Book of Mormon is most widely known) provide the basis for how members develop and nurture their faith. Each week adherents re-enact a ritual sharing of bread and water with an explicit charge to remember Jesus. Sunday and weekday classes for youth and adults routinely teach the ancient and modern histories of the Church. Each year every local congregation prepares a history of its activities. Individual members are encouraged to keep diaries to prompt mindful reflection; they write autobiographies to pass on to children and grandchildren; they gather genealogical data about their ancestors for use in sacred temple rituals. As a member of the faith community, I participate in sacred rituals, I have been assigned to compile the congregational history, and I have taught the Church’s history as a missionary to those exploring the faith and as a Sunday school teacher of youth. As an academically-trained historian, I have also taught about the Church and its history to non-Mormon undergraduate history students in a public university and to LDS doctoral students from multiple disciplines.
The Church History Library operationalizes its mission to collect, preserve, and share the records of the Church. We gather and store records—more than 240,000 archival, manuscript, and oral history collections with more than 270,000 print and rare items—in 26 locations on 6 continents. Access and preservation strategies are centrally managed. A portion of our records are not for external distribution, as we comply with international copyright and privacy laws and respect the confidentiality of corporate and priest-penitent settings. Yet, our online catalog provides multi-lingual access to more than 10.7 million images, a number that grows at an average rate of 307 images per hour and is guided, in part, by patron digitization on demand. Some of our records, such as the historical papers of Joseph Smith and of early Mormon women, undergo transcription and formal documentary editing. We collaborate with other work units that manage a museum of history and art, historic sites from the Church’s 19th-century history, and genealogical research. We have employed a variety of audience research methods— focus groups, segmentation analysis, persona development, true intent queries, usability testing—to better understand our audiences. We serve internal influencers who make historically-informed decisions, speak to the entire membership, and develop Church products and curriculum. We assist systematic researchers, including academics, journalists, and advanced genealogists. And we seek to improve the quality of historical engagement of Church members. The desire to touch the lives of individual members prompted us to think beyond traditional outreach invitations to “Discover the Church History Library” in search of a personalized connection.
From Records to Database to Targeted Email
Our goal of connecting Church members with historical records operates in a world of realities. One of the things we have learned about Church members is that they prefer interpreted histories—exhibits, stories, or videos—to the “raw” records in our collection. Further, our online library catalog is neither intuitive nor a destination. And, our members are more active on mobile devices, especially internationally. So we decided to focus on Church members who were engaged in genealogy work with a goal to encourage the use of records in our collections as sources for their family history findings.
The first phase of the initiative involved creating a database of missionaries who had served during the Church’s first 100 years, from 1830 to 1930. For the later 70 years of the span, missionary service had been recorded in a series of “Missionary Register” volumes that we scanned and then shared with FamilySearch, the LDS Church’s genealogical organization. FamilySearch’s indexing volunteers transcribed details about every name. For missionaries who served from 1830 to 1860, we assembled a team of approximately 55 modern-day missionaries who researched to identify individuals from period manuscripts and periodicals. In February 2016, we launched the resulting Early Mormon Missionaries site, a searchable database of more than 38,000 missionaries that provides information about individuals, direct links to digitized sources in our catalog, and historical contextual information. The announcement drew attention, increased website traffic, and led to additional record acquisitions.
For the second phase of the initiative, we partnered with FamilySearch to inform living persons that one or more of their relatives was documented in the database. We cross-checked the names in our database against the 1.1 billion names in the FamilySearch Family Tree, a crowd-sourced database that allows registered users to submit information about ancestors and relatives that gets combined into a single master data file. As a result, we identified 1.4 million users whose relatives matched the metadata in our missionary database. Our partners at FamilySearch created a campaign that sent emails in June 2017 to the appropriate users that contained information about the relative (including a photo where possible) and invited recipients with a single click to go to the relative’s entry in the database. The campaign was designed for mobile devices, employed a/b testing to identify the most enticing subject lines and message formats, and solicited interactive feedback.
As a result of the missionary database campaign, unique visitors to our website spiked tenfold to hit 109,000 on a single day. Unique visitors to the digital records in our online catalog more than tripled, including an initial spike, a new and higher steady plateau, and subsequent peaks of activity around missionary records. Just less than half a million visitors went to FamilySearch’s Tree on a single day (one of their top three days in visitor traffic history) and many of them linked the primary sources in our database to their relative’s record. Qualitative feedback revealed Church members using their finding of a missionary relative in their family interactions as well as in Church settings, such as in teaching and congregational speaking. A surprisingly large number of participants reported that they had thought they were a new convert or the only member of their family in the Church and were thus surprised to learn of a relative active in the faith. The long-term impact of this identity shift from newcomer/outsider to long-timer/insider will play out throughout their lives.
In the end, the missionary database and email campaign digitized records and placed them online, built a tool to increase relevant access to those records, informed more than a million individuals of personally relevant records, changed the behavior of thousands of people, and influenced the identities of many participants.
This post was prepared for a working group at the annual meeting of the National Council for Public History titled “Crossing the Line: Facilitating Digital Access to Primary Sources” on April 21, 2018, in Las Vegas, NV.
Nearly two years after a Church History Symposium devoted to the subject of Mormon women’s history, selected papers from the event are now available in a new volume published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
The volume includes chapters by Keith A. Erekson, Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Andrea Radke-Moss, Amy Harris, Amy Easton-Flake, Heather Belnap Jensen, Josh E. Propert, Julie K. Allen, Benjamin E. Park, and R. Marie Griffith. It was was edited by Rachel Cope, Amy Easton Flake, Keith A. Erekson, and Lisa Olsen Tait.
The book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Visit the book’s page on my website to learn more, download a chapter, or purchase copy.
This text is re-posted from R. Scott Lloyd, “‘History skills’ can strengthen study of Book of Mormon witnesses, speaker says,” Deseret News, August 4, 2017.
As the director of the Church History Library, Keith Erekson has charge, among other things, of manuscript records pertaining to the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon.
“But we also happen to have the world’s largest anti-Mormon collection,” Erekson quipped as he spoke Thursday, Aug. 4, at the annual FairMormon Conference. That’s because of Doctrine and Covenants 123, he said, which counseled the early Saints to “to gather up libelous publications, magazines, encyclopedias, histories.”
“That’s a practice we’ve continued into the 21st century,” Erekson said at conference convening at the Utah Valley Convention Center. “In those materials the witnesses come under quite a bit of scrutiny.”
Dealing with such criticisms falls under the province of FairMormon, which is not affiliated with the Church but, according to its mission statement, is dedicated to using scholarship, scripture, doctrine, historical literature and logic to address criticisms leveled at the Church.
In his address, Erekson examined accounts of the witnesses, both favorable and antagonistic.
“Along the way, I hope to demonstrate and articulate some history skills that you can use to strengthen your study and your discipleship,” he said. “I also hope we can expand our view of witnesses and witnessing as we do this.”
One of the history skills Erekson shared was to examine sources. He cited an excerpt from the book No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie, a famous critic of Mormonism and Joseph Smith. Brodie cited an article from the newspaper The Palmyra Reflector, which indicated that Book of Mormon witness David Whitmer had spoken to the newspaper editor.
Erekson said that as Church History Library director he has convenient access to that issue of the Reflector in the library’s archives, so he looked up that article. It had a reference to an “informant” between David Whitmer and the editor.
“Many of the pieces in the Reflector were satirical,” Erekson said. “This device of having the shadowy ‘informant’ who may or may not remember everything particularly works well in satire, because you tell a story, you attribute it somewhere fuzzy, and then you’re off.”
Erekson recommended the book Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses by Richard Lloyd Anderson as “the single best study of the witnesses and their testimony.” From the book, he quoted one of Anderson’s conclusions: “A main safeguard exists for testing claims that a witness modified his testimony — be sure that all statements come from the witness himself.”
Collectively, the witnesses have provided more than 200 first-person accounts of their experience and testimony, Erekson said.
Another “history skill” that Erekson recommended is to closely read multiple accounts of the Book of Mormon witnesses, analyze them and corroborate details.
“One of the things you want to do is expect citations,” he said. “There are publishers who will publish things without citations. That’s the first the sign: If they don’t even care enough to tell you where they found their historical information, don’t worry about spending the time to figure out if they’ve made it up or if they haven’t.”
Erekson suggested using the Book of Mormon itself and other scripture to discover or notice important information about the witnesses. He highlighted a phrase in Ether 5:3 that declares the Three Witnesses would be shown the Book of Mormon plates “by the power of God.” Similar language is in 2 Nephi 27:12 and on the title page of the Book of Mormon, that it was translated “by the gift and power of God.”
“Every time Joseph was asked how he translated the plates, this is the type of language he used,” Erekson said.
It is important to note, he said, that the phrase lacks the trappings of affidavits or other legal documents. Thus, another skill, he said, is to ask questions and make comparisons about what is or is not present in writings concerning the witnesses.
“That leads us to one of the most important skills we need when we understand anything from history: Avoid present assumptions,” he said.
Another such present assumption modern-day readers “inflict upon the past” is that phrases such as “by the power of God” mean that the witnesses did not see the physical plates with their own eyes, but rather, beheld them in vision.
It is a false dichotomy, he said, to assume that it was either by physical sight or by spiritual vision; it could be both.
“Replace ‘or’ with ‘and,’ ” he said.
Citing Ether 5:2, Erekson said the witnesses were referred to as “those who shall assist to bring forth this work.” The witnesses assisted in many ways, he pointed out, including sharing the burden with Joseph Smith of testifying to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon account.
Mary Whitmer, who was visited by the angel Moroni and shown the plates, assisted by keeping house, milking cows and caring for guests while men in the household brought forth the Book of Mormon.
“The men were given a witness to share with the world; Mary was given a witness to strengthen her personal faith,” Erekson commented. “Clearly, Moroni, who understood a thing or two about loneliness, had a larger view of what it means to assist in this work.”
Doctrine and Covenants 5 talks about the testimony of the witnesses going forth to the world and promises their testimony will be followed by a spiritual manifestation to those who ask for it, Erekson noted.
“This manifestation is a kind of reinforcement,” he said.
Thus a final item in Erekeson’s “history skills” list is to combine the best historical and spiritual evidence.
“So if you were to pick up something now that was critical of the witnesses — whether it was the Palmyra Reflector or Fawn Brodie or something more recent on the internet — these skills will help you,” he said.
In summation, the skills are close reading, following the sources, asking questions, being wary of “present assumptions,” changing “either/or” to “and,” and combining the best historical and spiritual evidence.
Erekson suggested two articles he has authored for learning more about history skills. One is “Understanding Church History by Study and Faith” in the February 2017 Ensign, and the other is “A Pattern for Learning Church History by Study and Faith” on the Church History website, history.lds.org, April 12, 2017.
