PDFs in the New Gospel Library on LDS.org
Did you know that in the new Gospel Library you can view many items in their full graphical layout as a PDF file?
For existing publications: We provide a single PDF of the entire publication. To see it, go to the Table of Contents for the whole magazine or manual, and click View on the format bar. Please note that PDFs of magazines only go back to 2001, even though text of the magazines goes back to 1971 (because of copyright restrictions).
For future publications: At some point, we will begin providing PDFs of individual articles in magazines and individual chapters in manuals. To see them, click View on the format bar of the article or chapter. If there is no View as PDF option, go to the table of contents page to see the PDF file of the entire publication. You can then advance to the article or chapter.
Once you’ve found the PDF, you can read it online, print all or part of it using the Adobe Reader command buttons that appear inside the window, or download the PDF by clicking the Adobe Reader command button labeled Save a Copy.
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I’m curious why some articles from older periodicals aren’t online.
For example, Stan Larson’s article “Changes in Early Texts of The Book of Mormon,” in the September 1976 Ensign, pages 77 to 82. It’s not on the Church web site, and the table of contents for that issue doesn’t list it. (It was in the TOC in the previous version of the web site, but even that’s gone now.)
That’s a particularly useful article. What happened to it?
To post magazines online, we have to get copyright permission from all the authors, artists, and photographers for each article. Where we have not been able to get the needed permissions, we cannot put those articles online. The table of contents for each magazine is dynamically created from the articles that exist online, so if an article isn’t online, it also doesn’t appear in the online table of contents.
Are there any plans to digitize former Church publications pre-1971 for the Gospel Library? (i.e. Improvement Era, RS Magazine, Times and Seasons, Millennial Star, Church News/Church section of Deseret News)
Dear LDSWebguy,
I hope you can help with something that has been bothering me for the past two years. On the CES website you have all the institute manuals listed. There are two options - one to download the entire PDF file and the other to view in PDF format in a browser. Many of the links and downloads for this page are messed up and do not allow you to properly download the manual. It is not every manual but many of them are messed up. You will only end up with one page or sometimes only a cover page. There are also some problems with the browser PDF version.
I spoke to someone in your department earlier in 2006 and he mentioned it to a co-worker who said that they would check it out and correct it. Unfortunately, the problem has still not been corrected. In order to see what I mean, I ask that you go to the website and download the manuals as PDFs. Once you open them at look you will see.
It would be great if you could correct this so we can download the institute manuals. I don’t know if the same problem exists for the seminary manuals.
Thanks.
The table of contents for each magazine is dynamically created from the articles that exist online, so if an article isn’t online, it also doesn’t appear in the online table of contents.
Interesting. I wish that you could find some way of putting missing articles back in the TOC and/or putting your explanation (above) on the site. As things are, it makes it look like the Church is simply not posting articles it finds uncomfortable. The Church doesn’t need any more reasons to be accused of suppressing information. [g]
Michael, thanks for pointing out the problem with the CES PDFs. I’ll have someone check them out and also be sure they are correct when we add them to the Gospel Library.
Karl,
Now that we’ve moved all the existing English library into the new library, our next priority is to build a similar database in many other languages, so that’s where we’ll be spending most of our time. For now, there are other ways to get older English materials, such as the GospelLink program. I haven’t heard that the Deseret News has any plans to create a historical database of their Church News section.
The PDF version is great. We like to use the activies in the Friend for Family Home Evening and in the past it was a little cumbersome to find the image and then print it. PDF makes it much easier.
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