Awesome Tour of the New Church History Library

The open house for the Church’s Library is underway this weekend only, and we decided the opportunity was too good to miss.  The Library houses old manuscripts, books, etc., from LDS Church History.  On display during the open house were some pretty awesome artifacts.

I took a few pictures with my G1 Android Phone, and was glad I had it there because some of the things on display won’t be open to the public (I asked if I could take pictures with no flash, and they said I could, just FYI for all you document preservers out there).

Also, this library is different than the Church History Museum and the Family History Library.  The facility is brand new and is across the street from Temple Square (North Side).

Above is a picture of the library.  The building has many large windows which offer a great view of Temple Square as well as the Capitol.

We enjoyed seeing a very moving film about Church history and records (didn’t know they could be moving did you?).  The film depicted the late 1800′s with a brother Millet who was told by his children that their neighbor, brother Hall did not have any flour or bread for food.  You’ll have to watch the movie there to see what happens.

We walked through the preservation room (kind of reminded us of National Treasure) and saw the temperature controlled storage rooms.  They said that by lowering the temperature 18 degrees, they can double the life of the documents.  They had some rooms in th 50′s and others close to freezing.

We enjoyed seeing the reconstruction/preservation room.  They had the old presses there on display, but we also saw that they used the old machinery to fix old books.  One of the restorers of the Book of Mormon…ha…ha…he restored copies of the original Book of Mormon was there and was explaining with the aid of a flat screen TV and video what he did to restore one of the original copies of the Book of Mormon printed in 1830 and put on display for us for the open house.  It was pretty fascinating, the technique, the old tools as well as modern that he used to put the book bind back together.

This picture is in the same room as shown/mentioned above.  The restorer is at the front (sorry, not a very good picture), but you can also see the Capitol in the background.

Here it is, an original copy of the 1830 Book of Mormon.  Only 5,000 copies were printed in the first run.  The handwriting in the book is by Joseph Smith and addressed to the recipient of the book who is also mentioned in the Doctrine and Covenants.  This is the book that was talked about in the restoration…ha..ha…room.

One of the neatest things we saw was an actual page (not a replica) of the original transcription page from the Book of Mormon.  Absolutely fascinating.  Sorry, there was glare from the overhead lights.  I tried to move to get it out of the way.  The page details Nephi’s interaction with Zoram.