Tips for Researching at BYU (Online)

By September 20, 2014

muwThe newly redesigned Harold B. Lee Library website is a great resource. Having spent a good deal of time with the site I thought it would be useful to highlight resources and (generally) overlooked goodness at BYU’s libraries and archives for your Mormon Studies research.

L. Tom Perry Special Collections

You know what it is, but did you know the Special Collections provides RSS feeds for the following?

The feeds can be a bit spotty, but the collection highlights are at least monthly and very helpful. One blog recently featured the excellent Newel K. Whitney Papers, which were digitized not long ago by the staff there. A few more highlights include: a direct link to search the Special Collections’ finding aids: http://findingaid.lib.byu.edu/, Trails of Hope: Overland Diaries and Letters, 1846–1869, and a web map that shows all geocoded (items with a geographic location) collections (over 3900 items!).


Mormon Publications: 19th and 20th Centuries

Also, here are some “bookmarkable” digital collections you will likely want to revisit:


ScholarsArchive: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Another useful search portal is the ScholarsArchive ETD. This includes a lot of scholarly work that may not necessarily be collected as Mormon Studies but where I have found some really fabulous research related to the field.


BYU Master’s Theses on Mormonism

The digital collection entitled Master’s Theses on Mormonism (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) includes over 650 theses written at Brigham Young University . It is an ever-growing and eclectic Mormon studies collection representing a broad look at the history, culture, and sociology of Mormonism. A brief sampling of authors and titles clearly demonstrates this.

I imagine most know of this collection already, but don’t forget the browse by author option as it’s a nice why to see the breadth of the collection.


My next post on research tools and tips will be a walkthrough for an OSX (Apple) app called Alfred, for speeding up your online research process with some keyboard magic. Stay tuned and go ahead and suggest other BYU-hosted (or not) goods in the comments below!

 

Article filed under Research Tools


Comments

  1. I find useful the collection of the out of print publications of the Religious Studies Center:

    http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/search/collection/rsc

    Comment by Kevin Barney — September 20, 2014 @ 7:51 am

  2. Thanks, Tod. Redesigns always leave me floundering, so a guided tour is much appreciated.

    Comment by Ardis — September 20, 2014 @ 8:48 am

  3. Thanks, Tod!

    Comment by Saskia — September 20, 2014 @ 9:42 am

  4. Back when I was writing my MA thesis in 2007-2008, “Mormon Publications: 19th and 20th Centuries” was a fantastic new resource and was really on the cutting edge of making archival materials available digitally. I still use it on a regular basis.

    Comment by David G. — September 20, 2014 @ 11:37 am

  5. Nice work, Tod. What a research revolution we’re experiencing!

    Comment by Ryan T. — September 20, 2014 @ 5:58 pm

  6. Thanks for the guide to the new site design. It’s wonderful to have all these resources available online. It’s a real wealth of information.

    Comment by Amy T — September 20, 2014 @ 8:02 pm

  7. Thanks everyone! And Kevin: that’s a great collection!

    Comment by Tod Robbins — September 21, 2014 @ 10:33 pm


Series

Recent Comments

J Stuart on Review: The Thirteenth Apostle:: “Thanks, JR! The post has been updated. That's what I get for reviewing books at 1 in the morning.”


JR on Review: The Thirteenth Apostle:: “At least once - maybe only once - your review names "Partridge" when I think you meant "Lyman". See 4th paragraph. If that's…”


Quincy D. Newell on Review: The Council of: “Matt, thanks for the book suggestion—I’ll check it out. I agree that it would be really helpful to know how things have changed over…”


SC Taysom on "The Heathen World and: “KGL is one of my YSAR colleagues! You landed a real gem this time.”


Steve Fleming on Thoughts on PBS'S Wolf: “Right, but I wonder if a particular agenda is more a motivation to write these kinds of works than simply a desire for accuracy.”


Glenn Thigpen on Thoughts on PBS'S Wolf: “Maybe it would be better to just go for an accurate history rather than an interpreted one. Of course, all history is interpreted to a…”

Topics


juvenileinstructor.org
http://juvenileinstructor.org/tips-for-researching-at-byu-and-elsewhere/
juvenileinstructor.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-43
49372
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:F5YROKMUEMXNWEQWKK6NEOMKMH2KMRDJ
<urn:uuid:8d82f27e-153b-484f-a27c-e46298888d6a>
2017-10-16T21:56:35Z
162.144.141.19
text/html
sha1:JWGJQXULESM6ZGCVYFR4KNNCCFWHZ73Z
<urn:uuid:66bd208c-73ea-4314-9a54-fc648c6fd6cb>
http://juvenileinstructor.org/tips-for-researching-at-byu-and-elsewhere/
length
response
<urn:uuid:2310e0c1-f8ff-4feb-9f3a-e29797f97f12>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-228-0-15.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-43
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for October 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf