In this activity, you will practice locating records in the Church History Department s collections using the online Church History Catalog. You will see examples of searches for the following records: 1. A letter written by Brigham Young. 2. A photo that has been digitized. Then, you will perform two searches on your own. EXAMPLE 1: A Letter Written by Brigham Young The first record you will locate is a letter written by Brigham Young in the 1870s to his sons Arta and Lorenzo while they were serving missions in England. 1. On a computer with Internet access, open a browser window, and navigate to the Church History Catalog at churchhistorycatalog.lds.org. 1
2. In the catalog, you will notice an empty search field with tabs along the top. For all the exercises in this learning module, we will search only the collections of the Church History Department. To do so, click the tab titled CHL, and then type the words Brigham Young into the search field. Click the Search button to the right of the search field. The results of your search will appear. You will notice that there are thousands of records that match your search criteria. This is too many to search through, so you need to narrow the results. There are filters you can use to do this. These filters, located along the left side of the screen, are grouped in categories, such as material type, topic, author or creator, and so on. 2
3. The record you are looking for was written in the 1870s, so filter out all the results except for those from the 1870s. Scroll down until you see a Decade filter on the left side of the screen. Click on 1870s. 4. Applying the filter called 1870s has narrowed your search results considerably. But you still have too many to review before you can find the letter from Brigham Young to his two sons Arta and Lorenzo. To narrow your search, you can then apply another filter. Since you know you re looking for a letter, you can click the Correspondence filter. Click on the Correspondence filter. 3
5. With this filter applied, you now have a more manageable amount of records to look through. Scroll through the results. When you find the letter written by Brigham Young to his sons Arta and Lorenzo, click it. When you click a record in the results list, you will see more detailed information about that record. 4
EXAMPLE 2: A photo that has been digitized Now look for a record of a photo that has been digitized. The record you will be looking for is a photo of Karl G. Maeser sitting with members of the board of directors of the 20th Ward institute in 1872. 1. Narrow your search to only records at the Church History Department. On the catalog home page, click the CHL tab located above the search field. 2. In the search field, type Karl G Maeser and press Enter. 3. On the left side of the screen, under Material Type, click the View Only Digital filter. 4. Scroll through the results. When you find the photograph titled Board of Directors 20th Ward Institute 1872, click it. 5. To view a digital copy of the photograph, click the View Digital Image button. The photo will open in a new browser window. 5
EXERCISE 1: Find a Photograph Now it s your turn to search on your own. Open the online Church History Catalog by navigating to churchhistorycatalog.lds.org. Find this record: A photograph taken from the air that shows the New Zealand Temple and the nearby college during the week they were both dedicated. (Find the call number, and then check the last page of this document to see if you found the correct record.) EXERCISE 2: Find an Oral History Open the online Church History Catalog by navigating to churchhistorycatalog.lds.org. Find this record: An oral history given by Charles Sono-Koree, in which he discusses his service as a stake president in Ghana. (Find the call number, and then check the last page of this document to see if you found the correct record.) 6
ANSWERS Exercise 1: Find a Photograph Correct Record: You should have found a photograph with the call number PH 2805 or PH 3930. If you did not find the photograph, try a new search using New Zealand Temple in the search field. Then filter by photographs. Scroll through the results until you find a record that matches the description. Exercise 2: Find an Oral History Correct Record: You should have found an oral history with the call number OH 1859 or OH 4008. If you did not find the oral history, try a new search using Charles Sono-Koree in the search field. Then filter by oral histories. Scroll through the results until you find a record that matches the description. 7 2014 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. English approval: 3/14. PD10050991