Library's new home is more than suitable

Millions of church records will soon have their own specifically designed, state-of-the-art space that will be more user-friendly and records-friendly when the new Church History Library is completed next summer.

Brent Thompson, director of records preservation for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said the east wing of the Church Office Building, where the library currently resides, wasn't intended to be a library when the building was designed, so the space hasn't been optimal for the library's purposes.

  

"It really wasn't designed for the kind of functions that a library needs to perform," Thompson said.

  

Which is why the new, five-story building at the corner of Main Street and North Temple in Salt Lake City will better serve patrons when construction is completed in 2009.

  

The east wing, originally designed to be a missionary training center when plans for the Church Office Building were drawn, was later designated to serve as the home of the library, which had previously been in the Church Administration Building, also on the downtown campus.

  

Thompson said the new building will serve two main purposes: to "provide a better customer experience than they have today" and "to preserve the records of the church in perpetuity.

  

"And so we're looking to construct a state-of-the-art archival storage facility that can achieve that purpose," Thompson said.

  

Christine Cox, director of church history customer services, said the "tricky" thing about the two-fold mission for the new library is that the goals are in some ways contradictory.

  

"We have these two conflicting philosophies, one to use and one to preserve," she said. The very nature of making the primary source material they're trying to protect available to the public can damage the records in the process.