About the Volumes
When completed, The Joseph Smith Papers will consist of more than thirty volumes in six series: Journals, Documents, Revelations and Translations, History, Legal and Business, and Administrative. Three volumes of Joseph Smith’s journals cover the years 1832 through 1844. The Documents Series, in eleven volumes, spans 1828 to 1844. Four volumes—manuscript revelation books, other early revelation manuscripts including key Joseph Smith translation manuscripts, the Book of Mormon printer’s manuscript, and published Joseph Smith-era scripture—make up the Revelations and Translations Series. Seven volumes of history encompass the period 1805 to 1844. The Legal and Business Series has three volumes that include records of cases occurring in New York/Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. Administrative records will publish minute books and letterbooks.
Typical Volume
Each volume is designed and will be used principally as a reference work, not as a narrative to be read straight through, cover to cover. For that reason, a modest amount of “friendly redundancy” is not only tolerated but expressly built in. For example, a theme introduced in the volume introduction might be treated briefly again in a document introduction so that a reader who goes directly to the document will have the essential information at hand.
The main editorial components of a volume include—
Front Matter
- Series introduction:
- This briefly introduces readers to the class of documents in the series and to the criteria for inclusion, along with other information helpful to understanding the series generally.
- Volume introduction:
- This sketches the broad historical setting of events and the concerns relevant to the documents in the volume. It may also introduce important themes and issues pertinent to a number of documents in the volume and therefore not easily handled in a single document introduction.
- Guide to editorial method:
- This is a statement of editorial principles governing treatment of the text and of the editorial apparatus supplied by the editors.
Main Body
- Document introductions:
- These orient readers by providing information and historical context necessary to understand each document.
- Source (or Provenance) notes:
- These provide full bibliographic and physical descriptions of each document as well as information about handwriting, dating, chain of possession, and other relevant details.
- Transcripts:
- These are verified and edited transcripts of each featured document. The final product is the result of editing the thrice-verified transcript according to project style guide and editorial procedures.
- Textual annotations:
- These note things about the manuscript that cannot be easily presented in the transcript itself or which we relegate to a footnote in order to make the text more readable.
- Historical annotations:
- These illuminate textual passages or supply clarifications, identifications, and other information that help readers understand the documents as a contemporaneous reader might have.
- Textual illustrations:
- These provide readers a better feel for the nature of key documents and permit graphical reproductions of some pages or passages. Although we will not publish facsimiles of all texts, each volume will reproduce many key passages.
- Other illustrations:
- Each volume will include graphical representations of relevant people, artifacts, places, and so forth. Because many of these will be “texts” themselves, they add important information as well as making the volumes more visually appealing.
Back Matter
- Biographical Directory, Geographical Directory, and Maps:
- These tools reduce annotation by replacing many footnotes. Because readers can find information here if they choose, editors eliminate most notes to persons and places. Volume editors select relevant maps from a project packet of newly researched and created maps relating to Joseph Smith’s life.
- Chronology and date reference:
- This tool covers only the dates spanned by each volume and will be as detailed as volume needs require. For example, a slightly expanded chronology in the volume of the Documents Series for 1837 will help readers understand why there are so few documents for that year. Combined with a one-page timeline overview of Joseph Smith’s life and a calendar of months, this allows readers to quickly orient themselves and see documents and events in context.
- Charts:
- Charts will be used as needed to present genealogical and organizational information and relationships and occasionally other material.
- Sources and Works Cited:
- Each volume will include a brief essay introducing major sources or collections of sources, along with a comprehensive listing of works cited. Short titles in the body lead readers here where they will find full bibliographic information.
- Calendar:
- A calendar is a comprehensive and annotated listing of all relevant documents. Many of the volumes will have these valuable scholarly reference tools, but not all: they are not relevant, for example, to the Journals Series. Calendars will include not only featured documents but also closely related ones that did not, for whatever reason, rise to the level of featured texts. A calendar might include forgeries and other questioned documents with a clear statement about why they are not to be trusted.
- Index:
- A detailed index that indexes texts, substantive data in annotation, and the back matter is an essential tool for using these reference volumes.
