From: wcsa@cbnews.cb.att.com (Willard C. Smith)
Subject: Re: McLellin Collection 
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 14:10:10 GMT
Summary: The Tanners don't know the first thing about archives
	 and it shows.
Keywords: Tanner Nov. Newsletter/Hoffman bombings/suppresion

Yawn. I waded through 2000+ lines of text waiting to see the big
revelation. The existance of a McLellin Collection has been known
since 1986 when the First Presidency described the contents of that
collection in the aftermath of the Hoffman bombings. I recall reading
about it in the Deseret News back in 1986 (just before I moved to
Illinois). Of course, only a few months ago, the Church News section
printed a rather lengthy essay on that collection, which included
descriptions and a discussion of its contents.

The Tanners' insistance that there was *A* McLellin Collection and that
the LDS church had THE (one and only) McLellin Collection, which the
LDS Church surpressed and thus inhibited the Hoffman investigation is
simply False. The Tanners' have obviously not worked in an archive, they
have obviously forgotten the discovery of a member of the SL Tribune,
and they have choosen to forget exactly what Hoffman had claimed was in
his McLellin collection.

Having cataloged manuscripts in an archive, the notion that there was a
single collection of McLellin Papers is absurd! Rather there are usually
multiple collections of papers. An archive will build up a large collection
of papers, as it aquires smaller collections. One of the projects that I
worked on was to collect all the Hancock County, Illinois (where Nauvoo
was located) Legal documents (that were not part of a larger collection)
and combine them and organize them. I don't mind stating that the task
was difficult because these documents were scattered throughout many
smaller collections and I had to look through the materials that had been
donated but had not be cataloged or processed yet. In each case my
search was limited to card catalogs (and we know how inexact they can
be) and from donator descriptions (and I know how inexact they can be).

In 1986 a reporter from the SL Tribune was investigating the Hoffman
bombings and looked into the problem of whether or not a large McLellin
collection of papers existed. She eventually located a collection of
papers that was owned by a woman in Texas (as I recall) that could be
termed a McLellin collection. Therefore the Tanners' statement that
Hoffman could have been exposed as a fraud earlier if the church had
described it's McLellin collection is just plain False.

Finally the Tanners' memory seems to gotten a little weak. Hoffman's
McLellin collection was suppose to contain materials that McLellin was
suppose to have stolen from Joseph Smith's home during the sack of Far
West, Missouri. Among the items that Hoffman claimed the collection
contained was the Canadian Copyright revelation. This was of interest to
LDS Historians since there are two conflicting versions of the story:
one by David Whitmer (which he wrote in 1887) and one by Hyrum Page (who
actually participated in the incident) written in 1848. Whitmer's
recollections were quite negative, but Page's description contradicts
Whitmer's in several KEY areas.  Hoffman also dropped little hints that
his collection contained Oliver Cowdery's history, which was suppose to
contain the only detailed description (when, where, how) of the
restoration of the Higher Priesthood. That would have made sense, since
we know that Cowdery's history disappeared after Far West was sacked.
As it turned out Hoffman had lied. He had nether a McLellin collection
nor did he have any of the other items that he claimed to have.

That the Tanners have decided to obscure these basic facts does not make
their arguments very impressive to me.

A Manuscript Archive is not like an open book shelf library. Papers are
stored in acid-free binders, which in turn are stored in acid-free
boxes. The boxes have short little titles, and catalog numbers. Unlike a
library where books are given subject numbers and grouped somewhat
together, you cannot group a single collection under a single subject.
Materials are usually numbered sequentually (based on when they were
processed, not based on their "subject.") If you don't like it, join the
crowd, I doubt that there is a single archivists in the country who likes
it either.  If you were to walk into an archive what you would see is
something like the ending scene in the "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Piles of
boxes, all looking alike, and all set up on shelves. Hardly a place to
brouse.

How then do archivists know what is in their collection? Although card
catalogs do give some "clue" the only way an archivist knows what is in
the collection is based on how much time he has worked in the archive
and how much material he has read.  When I worked at the HBLL Library
Archives and Manuscript Division at BYU the old archivist had just
retired and a new archivist had just been hired from the History
Department. Although the new head archivist knew his history, it was
also clear that he just didn't know the collection. I was told by one of
the old time workers that it would probably take him 10 years or more to
just get up to speed.

If this sounds akin to the situation in _The Name of the Rose_ by Umberto
Eco, where a collection can only be truely accessed by a living breathing
catalog, you're right. Although archivists have sought for more reasonable
methods, there are problems. Computerization is not as simple as one would
like it to be. I suppose that would be obvious only to one who has had to
pour over a "Full Dump."

In some of the very large collections there is usually a lengthy
description that is produced by the staff.  But if you are dealing with
smaller collection, say only 5 or less shelf feet, then such a description
would not be available. Based on the descriptions of the McLellin material
owned by the LDS church, they would probably fall in this later catagory.

I could readily believe that a collection was owned by the church, a
search repeatedly made for it, and it not being found. I recall an
incident where I searched the archive for a series of papers that were
suppose to be related to a collection I was cataloging, couldn't find
them, and had to catalog my collection anyway. About six months later,
surprise, I stumbled across the papers that I had previously searched for
while investigating an unrelated issue. It seems that the papers had
been grouped under a different collection than what one would have
expected, but made sense once you saw the papers that they had been
grouped with.  I dutifully went back and recataloged the collection
adding pointers.

Recataloging doesn't always take place. If you ever saw the backlog
(that is papers that have been donated, but have yet to be processed and
cataloged) then you would know why. There is so much to do, so little
funding to do it with, and everyone wants it done yesterday. Unfortunately
you can't throughly do all the investigating that you want to do, there
isn't any time!

Finally a note about vaults. I had to laugh at the Tanners' description
of the First Presidency's vault. Kind of conjures up an image of a
little black safe with a combination on it. Vaults in an archive are not
little black safes with combination locks. they are usually large areas
which are seperated from the rest of the archive by a fence and a lock.

At BYU, they had a rather small vault. It contained about four 8 foot
high shelves and each shelf ran about (I'm guessing) 25 feet. So I am
guessing that it contained about 600 shelf feet of papers. (Nothing that
could be browed through adquately in any short amount of time - believe
me). It contained the administrative papers of BYU and the papers of the
BYU Presidents.

I was told by Dennis Rowley, then head of the Manuscripts division, that
the BYU vault was rather tiny. Some business in the USA had a vault that
larger then the unprocessed manuscript storage room that was in the
basement of the HBLL Library. Believe me, that is a rather *large* room
at least twice as big as the entire library of my old High School.

I can imagine how big the First Presidency Vault is at the Church Office
Building, especially if it contains *just* the administrative papers of
the Church and the papers of the members of the First Presidency.
Searching such a vault would not be a trivial task. Certainly not the
type of trival task the Tanners suggest. It is just another example of
how either the Tanners have distorted basic information or that they are
just simply ignorant of how things are done. In either case, their
conclusions simply do not impress me.

As for free and open access to an archive vault, that would be a very
interesting thing to do. How about letting the Jehovah Witnesses have free
access to the archive vault of the Southern Baptist Convention? How
about letting Japanese competators free access to the archive vaults of
IBM?
-- 

              Willard C. Smith
  Oh God, Make my Words Palatable and Sweet, | att!cbnews!iwtgo!wcsa
   Because I Might have to Eat all of Them.  | wcsa@iwtgo.att.com
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc