Scholars moving to S.L.

"This change has really been in the works for at least six months. As early as last fall, our faculty began earnest discussions" about the future of the institute and the Smith Papers project.

Six full-time faculty members work under the auspices of the institute and many are close to retirement age. How to replace them and work with faculty carrying a full teaching load has been of some concern, she said.

While the Smith Institute had its beginnings at the LDS Archives in Salt Lake City, Derr said the institute is not a repository for historical documents, but rather serves as a resource for scholars.

Momentum has also been building within the LDS Archives since the appointment of Elder Jensen as church historian and the announcement in April of a new five-story, 250,000-square-foot Church History Library and archives vault.

"They have been planning for several months or years how to make church history available to a wider audience of church members and others," Derr said. "Their growing strength as a center for church-sponsored history has had an impact on us."

Part of that planning includes "documentary editing as part of a special projects shop, so editing the Joseph Smith Papers Project there makes good sense," she said.

Derr believes there is strong support for "making the Joseph Smith Papers academically rigorous and presenting complete documents. I don't see this move as any effort to suppress information. That would destroy the whole purpose in doing the papers, which is to make all the documents available."

The move coincides with "something of a sea change in the last five years as national interest in Mormon history has grown," she said.

One of the things the institute has struggled with is keeping up with all the scholars from many fields with an interest in Mormon history, she said.

"The archives are working very hard to make documents available. . . . My sense is they want to make materials more widely available to people, so far as that is possible. . . . To what extent scholars will or won't be able to get information is not my question to answer," she said. "My own experience has been very positive.

Derr said the bigger issue is how "Mormon history is going to be written from under the direction of the Family and Church History department."

Scholars both inside and outside the LDS Church remember the tension between historians and some LDS leaders two decades ago over the tone and content of some scholarship. At that point, access to the archives became more highly restricted and the Smith Institute at BYU was established.