Just as the University of Utah is digitizing several old newspapers from across the state, BYU is creating an online archive for church history collections, that will go live this week.

The collection will digitize missionary tracts used in England, all 26 volumes of the Journal of Discourses, The Deseret News in its weekly format, the first church hymnal, and early church newspapers. This compilation, The Nineteenth Century Mormon Publications, will be accessible across the world via the Internet.

"Because these are so rare that so few people have access to them unless they come to use the original documents in person, we are making them more accessible," said Susan Fales, curator of digital historical collections for BYU. Though only 20 of the 50 works will be accessible this week, the project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Fales said this project mirrors that of the U of U's, and is also related because BYU is digitizing all of the nineteenth century weekly volumes of the Deseret News to add to the U of U's collection of Utah newspapers. The work can be found through either university's Web site.

Both the U of U and BYU use a special process to digitize the old documents.

First, each page is scanned using an expensive scanner; the HBLL has two of these.

After this process is completed, an outside business is hired to perform optical character recognition where the full text is recovered onto a database.

"When you talk about digitizing something, it's about access, not archiving," said Scott Eldredge, program manager for digital initiative. "With digital products, technology changes fast. We are trying to make access to a broader audience and more usable multiple access points."

Eldredge sees the digitizing of these documents as useful at present, but not necessarily in the future. He said microfilm will remain a reference able archive unlike the ever-changing computer programs.

Though the project will have 50 titles, including 70,000 pages, online by the end of the year, 20 titles will be accessible this week, as the web page is made available.

The Nineteenth Century Mormon Publications are reachable through the library homepage under databases.

Fales pointed out that this digital archive will be helpful in learning more about early church history, especially because text searching is an option with these digital archives.

"Besides the normal kinds of news, many of the conference talks that were given in the 19th century are only found in the Deseret News," said Fales. "Also, every single article will be separated out and you can look at obituaries, and so there is a lot of genealogical material in it too."

The project is supported by donations, a large grant and funding from the school itself.

"The university is very supportive about getting this information out to all the members," Fales said.

This project uniquely provides a means for members of the church across the world to learn about early church history in an in-depth way.

"The nice thing about this is that it makes it possible for all the people of the church to have access to these documents," said Arnold K. Garr, associate department chair of church history and doctrine. "Whereas before, they would only have access to them if they were doing research here."



Copyright Brigham Young University 31 Jul 2003