TV show to preview Smith Papers Project

To write a biography is to connect the dots of a person's life — but first you need the dots. For Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founder Joseph Smith, that includes several thousand documents, from the mundane to the spiritual.

The Joseph Smith Papers Project, by the time it's completed a decade from now, will add up to 24 volumes of diaries, contracts, letters, legal documents and revelations: the raw material, explains project managing editor Ron Esplin, that writers and scholars can then use to construct their narratives and interpretations of Smith's life.

The first volumes will be published next year. As a preview, KJZZ-TV will air a documentary, "The Joseph Smith Papers Project: A Television Foreword," at 7 p.m. Monday. The program, produced by KJZZ, will air again at 10 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 11.

The documentary is not a Ken Burns-style, sepia-toned look at Smith's life; something like that might come later, says KJZZ director of news and production Dean Paynter, who reported, wrote and produced the program. Instead it's a straightforward overview of the Papers Project, including interviews with historians involved in the effort. Beginning in early 2008, KJZZ will then start airing the first of 50 half-hour shows offering more details of the documents and interviews.

The documentary and the 50 shows are funded by auto dealer and Utah Jazz/KJZZ owner Larry H. Miller and his wife, Gail. The Millers also have helped fund the Papers Project itself, allowing it to hire additional full-time historians. The project is part of the Family and Church History Department of the LDS Church.

The Joseph Smith Papers Project, like similar projects for America's Founding Fathers, locates and then transcribes hand-written documents that are then scrutinized and verified by three separate historians, often using high-resolution color scans, microscopes and ultraviolet light to decipher the cursive of Smith, his scribes and correspondents. Annotations are then added to provide historical context. The Joseph Smith project has been certified by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), a division of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Given "the scrawls of rushed penmen and the deteriorating condition of some documents," Esplin says, there is no way to ensure 100 percent accuracy of the documents. But the scrutiny has yielded both small and large corrections in "supposedly well-known texts."