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Professionalization of the Church Historian's Office “There Shall Be A Record Kept Among You:” Professionalization of the Church Historian’s Office J. Gordon Daines III University Archivist Brigham Young University Slide 1: The archival profession came into its own in the 20th century. This trend is reflected nationally with the development of the National Archives and the establishment of the Society of American Archivists. The National Archives provided evidence of the value of trained staff and the Society of American Archivists reached out to records custodians across the country to help them professionalize their skills. National trends were reflected locally across the country. This presentation examines what it means to be a profession and how the characteristics of a profession began to manifest themselves in the Church Historian’s Office of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It also examines how the recordkeeping practices of the Church influenced acceptance of professionalization. Professionalization and American archives Slide 2: It is not easy to define what differentiates an occupation from a profession. Sociologists who study the professions have described a variety of characteristics of professions but have generated very little consensus on which of these characteristics are the fundamental criteria for defining a profession.1 As Stan Lester has noted “the notion of a ‘profession’ as distinct from a ‘non-professional’ occupation is far from clear."2 In spite of this lack of clarity about what defines a profession, it is still useful to attempt to distill a set of criteria for defining what a profession is. This is particularly true when studying occupations that are attempting to gain status as a profession. Slide 3: Since its establishment in the early 20th century the archival occupation has steadily charted a course towards becoming a profession. In gauging the progress of the archival occupation towards this stated goal, it is critical to have a set of criteria against which to 1 For example see Patrick B. Forsyth and Thomas J. Danisiewicz, “Toward a Theory of Professionalization,” Work and Occupations vol. 12 (1985): 59-76; Adam Yarmolinsky, “What Future for the Professional in American Society?” Daedalus, vol. 107, no. 1 (Winter 1978): 159-174; Kenneth S. Lynn, ed. The Professions in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965); and Stan Lester, “Becoming a Profession: conservation in the UK” Journal of the Society of Archivists 23 no. 1 (2002): 87-94. 2 Lester, 88. measure its efforts. For the purposes of this presentation, I have chosen to define a profession by the following criteria: ● Possession and use of a specialized knowledge base. One of the few characteristics common across every sociological definition of a profession is the possession and use of a specialized knowledge base. In fact, it has been argued that “the profession must not only possess this knowledge; it must also help to create it.”3 ● Service Orientation. Another common characteristic is a service orientation. This means that members of a profession use their specialized knowledge base “for the benefit of individuals or groups with whom he or she establishes a relationship of trust and confidence.”4 In practical terms, this means that members of the profession exercise their specialized knowledge to benefit the client and not themselves. ● Community Sanction. Professions are given grants of power by the communities that they serve. These grants of power give professions the right to select who will become members of the profession and the right to discipline members who transgress the profession's code of conduct.5 ● Institutional altruism. Another important characteristic of a profession is that it possesses a system of institutionalized rewards that encourage members of the profession to maintain a strong service orientation. These institutionalized rewards systems typically take the form of codes of ethics and mechanisms for enforcing these codes of ethics.6 ● Image building. It has been argued that the creation of a strong public image is one of the key factors in an occupation gaining the community’s sanction as a profession.7 Examining the Church Historian’s Office of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints allows us to see a clear trend towards professionalization of the archival staff of that institution. Church Historian’s Office 3 William J. Goode, “The Librarian: From Occupation to Profession?” The Library Quarterly 31, no. 4 (October 1961): 306-320. 4 Yarmolinsky, 159. 5 For a more detailed discussion of how professions are granted power see Patrick B. Forsyth and Thomas J. Danisiewicz, “Toward a Theory of Professionalization,” Work and Occupations vol. 12 (1985): 59-76. 6 For more information on the impact of institutionalized rewards for maintaining a strong service orientation see Forsyth and Danisiewicz; Goode; John Frederickson and James F. Rooney, “How the Music Occupation Failed to Become a Profession,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Dec. 1990): 189-206; and Richard J. Cox, “Professionalism and Archivists in the United States,” American Archivist vol. 49 (Summer 1986): 229-247. 7 Forsyth and Danisiewicz, 64. Slide 4: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is imbued with a recordkeeping ethos. It infuses the highest levels of church governance and extends to local units. It is important to understand this recordkeeping ethos in order understand the professionalization of archival work within the Church Historian’s Office and its successor, the Historical Department. Slide 5: The importance of recordkeeping is rooted deeply in the Church’s sacred texts including the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. Recordkeeping concepts from the Book of Mormon had the earliest and most significant impact on Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Book of Mormon is, in the words of its principle compiler Mormon, “a small abridgement” of the records of his people.8 Mormon’s son, Moroni, augmented our understanding of what the Book of Mormon is and why it was written in the title page that he prepared for the book. Moroni wrote “it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites—Written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile…. to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever.”9 Slide 6: Recordkeeping is an unmistakable theme throughout the entire book. Through the process of translation Joseph Smith became familiar with the importance of recordkeeping to the Nephites and how the presence and absence of records impacted the entire society. One of the earliest actions of Nephi, the leader of the group of people who become the Nephites, was to return to the city of Jerusalem to obtain the brass plates of Laban, which contained “the record of the Jews.”10 Marlin K. Jensen, current Church Historian, has written that Joseph Smith must have “taken note of the careful way other prophet-historians in the Book of Mormon attended to record keeping.”11 Robin Jensen explained why the recordkeeping of the Book of Mormon resonated with Joseph Smith. “Laban’s brass plates represented not only the physical preservation of records and history, but the concept that records, especially sacred records, would preserve a heritage, religion, and a nation.”12 Slide 7: The recordkeeping pattern that Joseph Smith observed in the Book of Mormon would have deep implications for the development of recordkeeping in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The pattern observed in the Book of Mormon was one of writing and preserving sacred history, rather than gathering original documents—what we associate with 8 Book of Mormon, Mormon 5:9. 9 Ibid., Title Page. 10 1 Nephi 3: 3. 11 Marlin K. Jensen, “Making A Case for Church History,” in Preserving the History of the Latter-day Saints, ed. Richard E. Turley, Jr. and Steven C. Harper (Provo, UT; Religious Studies Center, 2010), 5. 12 Robin Scott Jensen, “Rely Upon the Things which are Written”: Text, Context, and the Creation of Mormon Revelatory Records (MLIS Thesis at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, December 2009), 86. archival work. Joseph Smith implemented this same pattern upon the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830 when he received a revelation directing that “behold, there shall be a record kept among you.”13 Oliver Cowdery originally fulfilled the command to keep a historical record.14 He recorded meeting minutes, patriarchal blessings, membership information, priesthood ordinations, and a kind of narrative church history. His tenure was short as he was called to serve a mission for the Church and in 1831 Joseph Smith received a revelation directing John Whitmer to “write and keep a regular history… [and] to keep the church record and history continually.”15 This revelation established the position of Church Historian. Additional revelations would solidify the importance of this office. In November 1831 John Whitmer would be reminded that he should be “writing, copying, selecting, and obtaining all things which shall be for the good of the church, and for the rising generations that shall grow up on the land of Zion.”16 A year later in 1832 W. W. Phelps was reminded of the importance of recordkeeping to the Church when he was told that the Lord’s clerk (the Church Historian) was “to keep a history, and a general church record of all things that transpire in Zion.”17 From very early on the Historian’s Office had community sanction—its recordkeeping role was publicly, and divinely, recognized and accepted by the Church.
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