New LDS Church History Library Rises in Utah
Kim Woodbury, “New LDS Church History Library Rises in Utah”
An impressive new
building under construction in Utah will be devoted entirely
to preserving and sharing the history of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church History Library is
located in downtown Salt Lake City, northeast of Temple
Square. The library will not open until June 2009, but here
is a sneak peek into this state-of-the-art building.
The LDS Church preserves materials chronicling
its history from humble beginnings in upstate New York in
1830 to the present day with 13 million members around the
world. These materials are currently housed in the east wing
of the LDS Church Office Building, an area that is woefully
inadequate, according to Brent Thompson, the director of
Records Preservation for the Church History Department of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“The space we currently occupy wasn’t designed
as an archival storage space,” Thompson said. “It doesn’t
have fire protection; it doesn’t have seismic protection;
and it doesn’t have adequate temperature, humidity, and air
quality control. We have also outgrown the space, both from
a staff perspective and more importantly, from a records
perspective. The new building will provide solutions to
these problems.”
The 230,000-square-foot library will have two
types of archival storage rooms. The 10 main storage rooms
will be kept at 55 degrees Fahrenheit with 35 percent
relative humidity. There will also be two special rooms that
will be kept at minus four degrees Fahrenheit for color
motion picture films, photographs, and records of special
significance to the LDS Church.
The collections that will be housed in the new
facility include:
- 260,000 books, pamphlets, magazines, manuals, etc.
- 500,000 historic photographs, posters, maps, etc.
- 40,000 audio and video recordings
- 120,000 local histories for LDS Church units
- 150,000 journals, diaries, papers, and manuscripts
- 20,000 rolls of microfilm
- 3.6 million patriarchal blessings for LDS Church members
Some of these
items will be available in an open stacks reading room,
while others will be located in archival storage rooms and
delivered to patrons for use in a secure reading room.
The Church is committed to making its historical
materials more accessible, Church History Department
managing director Steven Olsen said. “There will be hundreds
of thousands of records available to the public upon
request,” he continued. “There will be some things that are
not accessible to the general public. We respect the sacred,
private, or confidential nature of many of the records we
hold, but we are committed to making appropriate records accessible.”
This commitment to public accessibility is
reflected in the name of the new building. “We are making an
intentional statement calling it the Church History
Library,” Olsen said. “The word ‘library’ has the
connotation of being a publicly accessible institution,
archives does not. Archives are internally facing, primarily
for internal audiences. This will be the first time that the
Church’s historical library will have a public face. That is
not to say that it hasn’t been open, but it hasn’t been as
accessible because for the last century, the Church’s
historical library has been embedded in one of the Church’s
larger buildings and people could only come when those
larger buildings were open.”
The fact that the Church History Library is a
stand-alone building will allow extended hours of operation,
according to Christine Cox, the director of Customer
Services for the Church History Department. In addition to
more convenient hours, the building will also use current
technology, such as wireless connections, to enhance the
experienceof all customers, including those in remote
locations. Cox hopes that the building’s inviting atmosphere
will be welcoming to people of all faiths and levels of
historical expertise. The current library serves about
13,000 people a year, but Cox said the staff is preparing
for increased public interest after the new building opens
on June 22.
“We are creating educational and training
programs which will orient customers and help
them understand what services are available, provide
consultation services for researchers, and
provide educational events to help customers understand more
about Church history,” Cox said. “We want to connect people
to Church history."
In addition to the public areas and storage
space, the building will have areas for conservation,
collections development, and research. The Church’s
conservation efforts involve 300 to 500 books and documents
and 3,000 to 4,000 audiovisual recordings every year.
Collections development staff acquire and catalog 500 to 700
new collections annually, including 6,000 publications.
Other staff members housed in the new building will be
responsible for publications, historic sites, and Web content.
Over the past year, Church History Department
employees have been busily preparing for the move. Every
item in the collections was tagged and inventoried so that
nothing will be misplaced during the transition. The actual
move will begin after the current library facilities located
in the east wing of the Church Office Building close on
April 10. Church History staff will then move the
collections, arrange them in the new building, and get ready
to welcome all those interested in the history of The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.