Digital Preservation at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter - day Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a worldwide Christian church with more than 14.4 million members and 28,784 congregations. With headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah (USA), the Church operates three universities, a business college, 136 temples, and thousands of seminaries and institutes of religion around the world that enroll more than 700,000 students in religious training. The Church has a scriptural mandate to keep records of its proceedings and preserve them for future generations. Accordingly, the Church has been creating and keeping records since 1830, when it was organized. A Church Historian’s Office was formed in the 1840s, and in 1972 it was renamed the Church History Department. Today, the Church History Department has ultimate responsibility for preserving records of enduring value that originate from its ecclesiastical leaders and within the various Church departments, the Church’s educational institutions, and its affiliations. With such a broad range of record sources, the array of digital record types requiring preservation is also extensive. However, the vast majority of storage capacity in the Church History Department’s digital preservation archive is allocated to audiovisual records. Church Audiovisual Capabilities