No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

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aebrown
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#11

Post by aebrown »

jeanpitcher wrote:The links in LDS tech for downloading whole issues of back magazines is broken. I need some whole issues to search for topics and pictures for primary. I just need to browse old issues.
If you're referring to the links in this post (4 posts before yours), then you're right -- those links no longer work.

But you can go to any of the pages for General Conference issues of the Ensign and download full PDFs. For example, you can go to the November 2007 edition of the Ensign. You'll see a page that looks like this:
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By clicking on the download link at the top you'll have the option to see the full PDF for that edition. The download link and PDF option are indicated with red arrows in the screen shot I attached.

This technique currently only works for conference issues back to 1997.
sgreenacre
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#12

Post by sgreenacre »

Hi
I would like a PDF version of oct 1992 ensign. No download options are available under download column on the RHS of the page
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sbradshaw
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#13

Post by sbradshaw »

sgreenacre wrote:Hi
I would like a PDF version of oct 1992 ensign. No download options are available under download column on the RHS of the page
The Church didn't start using PDFs for magazines until 2001 (the PDF standard was still being developed in 1992) – so, any PDFs from before that point would be scans. The Church hasn't uploaded scans of older Ensigns to LDS.org – there might be copyright restrictions for stock photos, etc., that prevent them from being uploaded, or it may be that it just hasn't been a priority to scan them.
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andreweyringkimball
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#14

Post by andreweyringkimball »

It is odd that with thousands of periodicals available in pdf form, back issues of the Ensign are not. In doing research on the Church in Boston in the 1840s, I came across "Boston's Mormon Landmark" in the November 1973 Ensign, which references illustrations. But only the text is presented! For a visually rich magazine such as the Ensign, the decision to provide researchers only text seems odd. ?? --Andrew
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#15

Post by lajackson »

andreweyringkimball wrote:For a visually rich magazine such as the Ensign, the decision to provide researchers only text seems odd.
While it seems odd, the particular example you have given is likely because the Church does not have electronic distribution rights to the illustrations in that issue and either has not been able to obtain them or has determined to spend their resources on other efforts.

There are some wonderful photographs and illustrations in Church magazines before the dawn of the electronic age, and it is sad not to be able to access them through the convenience of modern technology. But for now, I still have to walk over to my bookcase to seem them.
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#16

Post by mdeighton »

I decided to pin this down as far as what the church currently has available, and I have confirmed that one may download entire PDFs of church magazines as far back as January 2001. Beyond that, audio 'readings' may be downloaded as far back as January 1997. This means that for all publications from January 1971 to December 1996, all that is provided is the online text.

Here's why this is a problem. Obviously it would be easy to cry foul here, but for whatever reason certain articles are omitted from the online list. Take for example Boyd K. Packer's talk "Message to Young Men" from the October 1976 general conference:
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/ ... 1?lang=eng
Not only is this talk entirely absent from the relevant Ensign article:
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1976/11?lang=eng
But I also notice that there is no transcript provided. Every single other talk I have looked at, even in that same session, has a transcript provided in both the ensign article and the general conference link. Why was this specific example omitted? Was it included in the initial publication? One would assume so, but I cannot confirm that, nor read the talk itself without listening to the video and physically typing it out myself.
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#17

Post by lajackson »

mdeighton wrote:Take for example Boyd K. Packer's talk "Message to Young Men" from the October 1976 general conference: . . .
Why was this specific example omitted? Was it included in the initial publication?
I do not know why this talk was omitted, but my personal opinion is that it was not published in the conference issue of the Ensign because of the sensitive nature of the topic. The talk was published shortly after the conference as a pamphlet entitled, "For Young Men Only," which was available for many years from the LDS Distribution Center. A few years ago the pamphlet was allowed to go out of print and was not published again.
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#18

Post by sbradshaw »

I don't have a copy of the November 1976 Ensign, but I do have a scan of the February 1977 Liahona in Spanish that reports on the same October 1976 conference. It appears that the talk wasn't published in the Spanish Liahona, so it presumably was never published in the November 1976 Ensign either. If the source for the text at Conference.LDS.org is the magazine report of each talk, that would explain the missing transcript.
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#19

Post by mdeighton »

sbradshaw wrote:I don't have a copy of the November 1976 Ensign, but I do have a scan of the February 1977 Liahona in Spanish that reports on the same October 1976 conference. It appears that the talk wasn't published in the Spanish Liahona, so it presumably was never published in the November 1976 Ensign either. If the source for the text at Conference.LDS.org is the magazine report of each talk, that would explain the missing transcript.
Huh. Thanks, yeah that does pretty much confirm it.
lajackson wrote:I do not know why this talk was omitted, but my personal opinion is that it was not published in the conference issue of the Ensign because of the sensitive nature of the topic. The talk was published shortly after the conference as a pamphlet entitled, "For Young Men Only," which was available for many years from the LDS Distribution Center. A few years ago the pamphlet was allowed to go out of print and was not published again.
I get why it wasn't published in the Ensign, and yeah they did end up turning it into a pamphlet instead. This is more of an issue recently simply because they didn't just stop printing the pamphlet. Turns out that in 2016, they actually removed the links on the LDS site. It is unusual enough that there's no transcript as it stands, whatever the reason for that, but with the alternative format now removed, should they not have addressed this? It essentially amounts to a general conference address that is unavailable online, that opens them up to accusations of censorship unless this is fixed.
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Re: No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

#20

Post by sbradshaw »

I'm sure the people who removed the link for the retired pamphlet wouldn't have thought of checking back in the 1976 general conference to make sure the text was still online. They might not have even known that it was originally a conference talk. I do agree that it should be fixed, for completeness if nothing else, but also to avoid the concerns you mention. I'd recommend sending feedback using the Feedback link at the bottom of LDS.org – those who manage content will be most likely to see your comments there.
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