The newly redesigned Harold B. Lee Library website is a great resource. Having spent a good deal of time with the site I thought it would be useful to highlight resources and (generally) overlooked goodness at BYU’s libraries and archives for your Mormon Studies research.

L. Tom Perry Special Collections

You know what it is, but did you know the Special Collections provides RSS feeds for the following?

• New Acquisitions
• New Resources
• Collection Highlights

The feeds can be a bit spotty, but the collection highlights are at least monthly and very helpful. One blog recently featured the excellent Newel K. Whitney Papers, which were digitized not long ago by the staff there. A few more highlights include: a direct link to search the Special Collections’ finding aids: http://findingaid.lib.byu.edu/, Trails of Hope: Overland Diaries and Letters, 1846?1869, and a web map that shows all geocoded (items with a geographic location) collections (over 3900 items!).

Mormon Publications: 19th and 20th Centuries

Also, here are some “bookmarkable” digital collections you will likely want to revisit:

• Crocheron, Augusta Joyce. Representative women of Deseret, a book of biographical sketches to accompany the picture bearing the same title. Comp. and written by Augusta Joyce Crocheron, and dedicated to the originals of this picture and book, their co-laborers in the Church and every true heart that will receive their testimonies. Salt Lake City, Printed by J.C. Graham & Co., 1884. 4p.l., 131p. 13 cm.
• Deseret News. Salt Lake City : June 15, 1850-December 10, 1898.  57 v. 28, 54, 40, 30 cm.
• Gates, Susa Young. History of the Young Ladies? Mutual Improvement Association of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from November 1869 to June 1910 by Susa Young Gates. Rev. and Pub. By the General Board of Y.L.M.I.A. Salt Lake City, The Deseret News, 1911.
  viii, 488p. 20.5 cm.
• Latter-day Saints? Millennial Star. Manchester, England, May 1840-March 1842; Liverpool, April 1842- March 3, 1932; London, March 10, 1932-December 1970. 132 v. 23 cm.
• The Seer. Washington, D.C. January 1853-June 1854; Liverpool, July 1854-August 1854. 2 v. (20 nos. in 320 p.) 23 cm. 2 p.l., [1]-316 p. 23 cm.
• Times and Seasons. Nauvoo, November 1839-February 15, 1846. 6 v. (131 nos. 192; [193]-582; [577]-958; 383; [384]-767; [768]-1135 p.) facsims. (1 fold.) 23 cm.
• Woman?s Exponent. Salt Lake City: June 1, 1872-February 1914. 41 vol. 35cm.
• The Young Woman?s Journal. Salt Lake City: [vol. 1] Juvenile Instructor Office; [vol. 2-8] Geo. Q. Cannon & Sons; [vol. 9-40] Deseret News. Vol. 1, no. 1 (October 1889)-vol. 40, no. 10 (October 1929). 23 cm.

ScholarsArchive: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Another useful search portal is the ScholarsArchive ETD. This includes a lot of scholarly work that may not necessarily be collected as Mormon Studies but where I have found some really fabulous research related to the field.

BYU Master’s Theses on Mormonism

The digital collection entitled Master?s Theses on Mormonism (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) includes over 650 theses written at Brigham Young University . It is an ever-growing and eclectic Mormon studies collection representing a broad look at the history, culture, and sociology of Mormonism. A brief sampling of authors and titles clearly demonstrates this.

I imagine most know of this collection already, but don’t forget the browse by author option as it’s a nice why to see the breadth of the collection.

My next post on research tools and tips will be a walkthrough for an OSX (Apple) app called Alfred, for speeding up your online research process with some keyboard magic. Stay tuned and go ahead and suggest other BYU-hosted (or not) goods in the comments below!