In May of this year, the project website, josephsmithpapers.org, was reviewed in the Public Historian—the official publication of the National Council on Public History, which is the premier national organization for public historians. Dr. Jeffery R. Appelhans of the American Philosophical Society stated: “The lavish project website exemplifies the state-of-the-art of digital papers publication, satisfying both public and scholarly audiences alike.” He observed that “visitors will be pleased to know the project is endorsed by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, has a who’s-who of professional historians on its advisory board, and appears to this reviewer unimpeachably professional and exacting.” Appelhans concluded that “the Joseph Smith Papers provides crucial source material for understanding Smith’s historical place as an American prophet and expands our understanding of the development of the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That it also does so in a web-based presentation so clear, compelling, and pleasant to use, is a laudable achievement.”[1]
In June 2020, the Mormon History Association’s annual conference was held virtually. One panel featured Joseph Smith Papers associate managing historian Robin Jensen in conversation with John G. Turner, a historian and religious studies professor at George Mason University, about the state of scholarship on Joseph Smith. Turner praised the project, stating, “In my mind there are two really enormous contributions to scholarship and historiography on Joseph Smith that have been made in the twenty-first century so far. One of them is Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling biography. And the other one is the Joseph Smith Papers Project.” Turner concluded: “The great thing about the JSP is that it greatly expands the amount of evidence that those interested in the early history of Mormonism have as grounds for their interpretations and scholarly arguments. The JSP doesn’t settle those arguments, and that wasn’t the intention. But it’s a gift to the scholarly community as a whole to have this meticulously created ground for further scholarship. That is what I see as the true gift of the JSP, and I fully expect scholars to benefit from that gift—from lots of different perspectives—for decades to come.”[2]
[1] Jeffery Appelhans, Public Historian 42, no. 2 (May 2020): 124–126.
[2] Turner, “Joseph Smith in Mormon History” (discussion with Robin Scott Jensen), Mormon History Association, Virtual Conference, June 2020.