My name is Jeffrey Cannon. I’m a Web editor with The Joseph Smith Papers.

We realized early on in the project that the website would be an important part of The Joseph Smith Papers. We can do things online that we just can't do in a printed volume.

For instance, online we can make both transcriptions and images available for every document; whereas to do that in a printed volume is extremely expensive. A continued benefit of putting images online is that it allows users of the site to zoom in to any portion of the document and see anything they want enlarged.

This is really quite useful at times because the writing is often difficult to read. In designing the website.

We've tried to be very careful to make it relevant

and useful to those who are professional scholars and students, as well as those who may have a more devotional interest in Joseph Smith.

The centerpiece of our website is the documents, the papers themselves.

We’ve tried and continue to try to make accessing the documents as easy as possible. We want everyone with an interest in the documents to be able to use them to learn more about Joseph Smith. When you come to the site,

you can access the papers by clicking the menu option at the top of the page. And then you're brought to a screen that looks like this.

You can choose from the different series within the project to find what you're looking for.

For example, if I were looking for the 1st of December 1838 letter from Joseph Smith to his wife, Emma, I would click on documents, then 1838,

and then I would find it in the chronological listing.

This letter is housed at the Church History Library in Salt Lake City,

but many others are owned by the Community of Christ and several other repositories that have cooperated with the project. And we're very grateful for their assistance.

You may note at the top of this document,

it has been identified as interim content.

That means that the transcription has not undergone its final verification and may have some errors.

Users are welcome to alert us of these errors, and they will be fixed before the final transcriptions are published.

You'll also see that many of the people in places mentioned in our documents are written in blue. That means that by clicking on the name or place, you can see a short biography or description to help in your understanding of the document and its context. Many, many hours have been put into creating reference material to aid and understanding the documents.

As work continues, this material will be added to and improved. Maps, charts, and other features will be added as they are completed.

We hope that The Joseph Smith Papers website will lead to a greater understanding of Joseph Smith and his work for everyone who visits our site and takes advantage of the resources we've made available.