Item Detail
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30845
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1
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4
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English
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'This is a New Day' : A Look Back in Anticipation of the Future in Writing Mormon History
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Journal of Mormon History
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2015
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41
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1
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Layton, Utah
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Mormon History Association
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14-25
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"SOME FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO, I was one day working in the Church Historian’s Office of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City as a research assistant to Marvin S. Hill, professor of history at Brigham Young University. We had been given access to the microfilms of several original manuscripts from which the History of the Church was written and were comparing the published text to the originals. Things were progressing nicely when former Assistant Church Historian A. William Lund, then about ninety years old and still very much a fixture in the place, shuffled his way over to our microfilm reader. I can still hear him breathing heavily as he tipped forward between our shoulders to see what we were studying so intently. Presently he said in a belabored voice, “You can’t have this,” and with
surprising agility began to pull the microfilm off our old-fashioned, hand cranked microfilm reader. While Professor Hill mildly resisted (there was little we could do without creating a scene), Brother Lund walked victoriously away clutching the microfilm only to be told soon thereafter by Elder Howard W. Hunter, then managing director of the department: “This is not how we do business anymore, Bro. Lund. This is a new day!” And with that, we eventually got our microfilm back. It was a defining moment for me—a personal academic conversion— because in that single moment I sensed the passing of an old order and the arrival of a new"[Author]