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Show Kerr The annotations are there Papers ntinued to add important context or ( ' Presbyterian Church dKir for 25 years. Church record, publish works related to its origin and growth. Eventually, the papers will also be made available online. No other projects have been announced for the imprint, but church historian Martin K. Jensen said in a news release that future projects will be for the benefit of church members and schol-- ; ars alike. "This is an invitation for anyone interested in the history of . the church to read the foundational documents relate to its ' beginning and development, '. '. Jensen said; can be searched. And that's ' just the beginning. After evaluating both data and documents, you prob- - . ably have a pretty good idea of what you want to know next. Write it down and map out a way to find it. Fami-- ; lySearch.org has a terrific chart, matching what you want to find with where you might find it. For example, ; for birth data, it lists vital records, censuses and other documents. You can access this chart in "A Guide to Research by going into and pushing on guides under "Form, Maps ; and Guides." dick on "A Guide to Research," the second item on the list. Scroll down to "Selecting Record Types," then click, and there you are. Step 8 is essential. It gives you confidence. It prepares you for your next tour ; around the research steps. Remember to start with Step 1: Obtain a few materials. Do you have the materials you need to solve the next puzzle? Maybe you need to purchase membership to an online library such as Ancestry .com or FamilyTree.com. You might need a CD of the 1870 Kansas census. Obtain the materials, and you are on your way through the steps again. Readers send me great ideas. One reader, J. Doxsee, suggested I create a check-- : off page for the eight steps. That will be in a future col- 'Extraordinarily " -- y . j 1 J&m i ; jf . s i importanf Historian and scholar Jan Shipps, who is not IDS but has studied the faith for most of ' her career, said the "Papers project is "extraordinarily im-- ) ' portant" because it will allow anyone an intimate view of Smith's spiritual and secular ; life. She said of all IDS Church publications, only the "History of the Church" volumes, com- - I piled in the early 1900s by B.H. Roberts, can compare. "It's breaking new ground, there's no doubt about that," Shipps said. "It will be basic to everybody who's going to do Mormon studies. Everybody will have to necessarily consult these volumes. Shipps said she's noticed a lot of interest in the project among her fellow academics, including among scholars who are not church members. She said the project's importance is not limited to members of the ' LDSChurch. Smith "is the founder of a new religious tradition," Shipps said "And as such, he is important not only for people who believe and who are IDS, but he is important because if you study his life, you can learn how religions come into existence. It's very important in terms of religious studies." This project is different from other IDS Church-produce-d volumes in that it has sought outside scrutiny and approval The National Historical Pub-- . , lications and Records Commission, a division of the U.S. government's National Archives and Records Administration, endorses projects that meet its standards of historical documentary editing, and has endorsed the "Papers" project. Additionally, a national advisory board that includes three non-LD-S scholars is overseeing the project. Board member and Yale University professor Harry S. Stout said receiving . the NHPRCs endorsement is significant. uj t This lengthy process has disyielded many valuable coveries, a couple of which managing editor Ron Esplin details in his essay "Why a Joseph Smith Papers Project Now?" posted on the project's Web site. For instance, pioneer historians transcribing one of Smith's journals read that his wife, Emma, "had another child" and then added that the child hadn't survived because . no one knew of it. What Smith really wrote is that "Emma had another chill," such as those caused by malaria. Other documents are much more difficult to decipher, and the project's reading of the text differs greatly from others previously produced One such document, some hastily scrawled notes from an account Smith gave of one of his arrests, had previously been interpreted to say Smith appeared before a "spiritually minded circuit judge and a few fit men." The project's editors have now concluded the text actually says a "spindle-shanke- d circuit judge and a few fat mea" Esplin writes, "Far from praising them, in this instance Smith was mocking those involved who had caused a reading him such trouble not out of harmony with other accounts of his sometimes defiant stance toward detractors and adversaries." . ..... . ft . . Vumn. Also, I discovered another y powerful reason to publish (Step 7). I lost my geneal-- : ogy database as well as the program. Never happened ' before. But it was gone. My tens of thousands of names ... my life's work was gone. So publish your genealogi- cal information in order to '.. safekeep it. (I did eventually find all those names in the recycle bin and restored i ' them.) I LaRae Free Kerr can be reached at itsallrelatives 8fcn.org. HomeChdce " iy Find it in Friday's Daily text read 0 - rg V'-- explain such things as "interlinear inclusion or marginalia," Barney said, meaning things written between lines or in margins. That way, if anything is crossed out or added in the document, readers can have some sense of how the original from Dl Continued from Dl Gl Saturday, April 5, 2008 DAILY HERALD D2 Heratd ' I Church history to the fore JosephSmithPapers.net Entry from Joseph Smith's Journal dated Dec. "It means they follow the same documentary editing conventions as other approved projects," said Stout, who is general editor of a similar project of early American theologian Jonathan Edwards's papers. "That means you don't substitute words, you dont paraphrase anything, you don't delete something if you think it's embarrassing. They're following all those conventions and bringing in outsiders as kind of quality checkers." ; Previous volumes about Joseph Smith, such as a collection of his teachings by former church president Joseph Fielding Smith and the manuals of Smith's teachings for use in IDS Church priesthood and Relief Society meetings this year, have been meant for spiritual instruction and have not sought endorsement by outside committees. But even with the NHPRCs endorsement, Barney said there are bound to be some who see the "Papers" project as inevitably biased in favor of Smith. "We recognize that we may . get tagged with that kind of thing," Barney said. "And I. . guess the proofs going to be in the pudding. We believe that we can produce this material in a more objective light than any other, and we believe the information we produce will be in the most correct context possi ble. We believe this project will withstand the kind of scholarly scrutiny that is applied to other projects of this kind" In the past, the IDS Church has reacted sensitively to challenges to its official version of church history and doctrine. In 1993, the church excommunicated five scholars and disciplined another who had publicly challenged church positions. Since then, the church has not renewed the contracts of soma BYU professors who challenged church positions. But Stout said.adhering to the NHPRCs standards will '1 ensure the volumes are accu-rat- e and professional, not controlled. He said he's seen some of the early volumes that will be published, and described them presenting Joseph Smith "warts and afl." "There's sections in there that don't make him look all that good," Stout said, including some about Smith's contemporaries' disapproval of his teachings. "And I would think if there was any selective editing going on to make him look better, those fragments wouldn't have appeared." f 21-2- 3, 1835. plural-marria- Decades of editing . The most important parts of the "Papers" project, Barney said, are "context, context, context." He means that reading handwritten, sometimes scrawled texts is hard enough, but sometimes understanding what the author intended requires lots of historical and religious context. To ensure that there are no errors and that any interpretation is correct, the project has been many years in the making. It started in the 1960s with the work of Dean Jessee, who began compiling and transcribing selections from Smith's papers. More than 30 years later, he had published three volumes of Smith's papers, enough to attract the attention of church leaders, who authorized an expanded effort. Now there are more than 40 scholars and editors listed on the project's Web site, www.josephsmithpa-pers.ne- t. ' "Manpower has made it so we can do things that we previously couldn't," Barney said "Technology has made it so we can do things we couldn't do otherwise. And generous funding, from the church and also from Utah businessman Larry H. Miller, who has created an endowment for this project." The technology to which Barney referred is imaging and document software that make it possible to capture and manipulate texts. Most transcriptions are done by no fewer than three sets of eyes. Most transcribers use color scans that can be enhanced and magnified, but the final transcriptions are compared to the original document itself by a specialist with access to special tools such as ultraviolet light and microscopes. Then the transcriptions are annotated by scholars with knowledge in one of the projects six emphases: journals, documents, revelations and translations, history, legal and business, and administrative. high-resoluti- &.V.ON a v;i:i:::m -3 i::dhlg: i:i o::j n:uY i MliV4Ull OT7 ProvHlfW-ei)B- la fwm f&Mi W4 The "Papers" project and the publishing imprint are part of a larger effort by the church to emphasize the great value it places on its history. Church members are encour- aged to obtain a testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet who restored God's church to the earth. The vast majority of what is now the church's doctrine was taught and recorded by Smith, especially in a volume of IDS scripture known as Doctrine and Covenants. . The church is also in the middle of constructing a Church History Library just east of the church's Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City. The new library will be completed in spring of 2009 and will house 270,000 books, pamphlets and magazines as well as 240,000 original unpublished records. "These documents are the crown jewels of Mormonism," Jensen said. "The truthfulness of Mormonism is inextricably tied to its history, and it is in our best interest to preserve these records and make them available to those who wish to study the origins of this remarkable faith." The library will have a large area open to the public as well as 10 archival storage rooms and two vaults. The vaults, kept at minus 4 degrees, are there to film, rare keep motion-pictur- e books, some newspaper items and other material in pristine condition. Some items will be available in an open library area and others will be available only in special reading rooms at patron request. Stout, the Yale professor, praised the church's willingness to devote time, manpower and money to the preservation of history. The Jonathan Edwards project on which he is now working was started more than 50 years ago and has taken much longer than he expects the Smith project will. "I think it's a edition, and they're launching it in the way it should be done," Stout said "And I hope they finish it in a lot less than 50 years." 230,000-square-fo- subzero-temperatur- e 5 Mistakes People Can Make When Selecting A Back Pain Doctor Cj : ! ' j d ThehlccGtdlcwprtxdmedbalprixeliBS ftttD5Smcrtaisbefcr5hand Notbeinoqupiortotraatmert non-dru- g At Spinal Aid Centers of America we offer spinal decompression, 8 FREE consultation to determine if you are a candidate, our web doctor consult online at www.spirialald.com and we've also put together a FREE DVD to nelp you understand. You can receive a copy slmpty by caning. Dr. Eric Leo, D.C. (C01) 70G -7C00 r At SpinztAidLv For a limited time INTUIS Life . 364 East State Road American Fork. 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