It was a dark and stormy night when I first hefted the newly printed "The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals Volume 1: 1832-1839." It was a weighty book, 3 pounds, 2.1 ounces, to be exact. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing.
It felt about 1.2 ounces too light.
I quickly turned the smooth, ivory-colored pages, frantically searching. It was all there: carefully transcribed journal entries by Joseph Smith, conveniently placed footnotes and 149 pages of reference materials including a chronology, geographical directory, maps, biographical directory, church organization charts, glossary, works cited and, and, and …
"Journals Volume 1" has no index.
Lightning flashed outside the window as I closed the book.
"So that explains why it is $49.95 instead of a round $50.00," I thought out loud.
Then it hit me. Didn't Richard E. Turley Jr., assistant historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, say something about this when he met with media last week?
I grabbed my notes and found what I was looking for: a real quote.
"The journals series will have three volumes, and at the end of the series there will be a series index," Turley said. "That will mean you do not have to check each volume to get the information that you need, you can check one index at the end and that will give you the information that you can find anywhere throughout the three. So think of it longitudinally — think of it in the long run when it is sitting on your shelf. It will be far more easy to use a single index at the end of the series than individual indexes for each volume."
Somewhere, a dog barked. I turned the pages of my Ampad "efficiency" Gregg-ruled steno book. I was closer to solving the Mormon mystery, or I already had solved the mystery but thought a little redundancy might pad the story a little.
Word on the street had it that an index had been prepared for the first volume, but it did not meet their expectations. Rather than delay the printing, they moved ahead.
"Of course when you are meeting a deadline, you are going according to priorities," Turley said. "And because we knew we could put a series index at the end, the index had less priority than getting other elements of the book correct."
So it wasn't a conspiracy after all. But wait! I ran across the room to my desk and fired up the MacBook Pro. There was one last thread that needed to be cross-stitched into my treasures of truth:
What am I supposed to do until "Journals Volume 3" comes out with the cumulative index?
I opened my trusty Firefox Internet browser and typed JosephSmithPapers.org into the address box. I didn't have to wait long before the last piece of the puzzle slid into place like a greased otter on a flimsy fiberglass playground slide.
JosephSmithPapers.org will have a "printable, searchable" temporary index for the first volume.
"So there is an index after all," I thought. "And it looks like this index will have the same level of quality, scholarship and usability found in the book."
The Web site also allows people to register to receive a printed version of that index by mail. They can use it until the series index is printed in the third volume — or be rebellious and continue to use it even longer.
As I turned back to my notebook, I turned the page and found a turn of phrase by Turley that seemed to sum it all up:
"We knew we could put the temporary index online and that in the long run it would be better to have a series index anyway. So, all in all, balancing those factors, we dropped the index."
I picked up the book again and walked out the door. As the wintry inversion-fog surrounded me, I couldn't help saying out loud, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful series of books."
E-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com