Deana L. Astle

Sources of Mormon Americana in Utah

This paper was written during the summer of 1968 for a course in special problems in the acquisition of materials at the UCLA Graduate School of Library Service. The original paper has been revised and condensed for the readers of Dialogue since much of it dealt with the historiographical problems inherent in the collecting of Mormon material, a subject which has been treated at length by Dialogue and other sources.

This paper is not intended to be an exhaustive study, but is rather a brief survey of the collections of Mormon Americana in the Salt Lake City area, all of which I have visited with the exception of the Church Historian’s Office. The purpose, then, of this treatise is to introduce these libraries to those people unfamiliar with their resources and to discuss some of the idiosyncracies of each collection. Also included is a brief discussion of the new bibliography on Mormon Americana.