Students and neighbors came to the Harold B. Lee Library to participate in seeing two first edition Book of Mormons. Curators came to facilitate the event and keep the books protected.
A curator of the event, Gregg Seppi, said, 'Today we did our hold an eighteen thirty event. It has sort of a number of purposes. The first is just to encourage, or help people to understand, that archives are for everyone; that things we preserve are for not just specialized researchers, but for everyone in our community.'
An attendee, Ashley Johnson, said, 'I love it. I didn't expect it to be in such great condition. It's quite a neat experience.'
The line for the Book of Mormons continued for part of the day, and students made sure to clean their hands and be extra careful with the precious books. Johnson said, 'I think it goes to show that our history is valuable. I hope that one day people will treat our time on earth as valuable as was in the past.'
Seppi said that preserving artifacts teaches us about who we are, and it helps students understand their heritage as members of the Church. The L. Tom Perry collection is where BYU holds artifacts.
Cindy Brightenburg, a reference specialist, said, 'We have rare books here in special collections. We are also an archives, so we have original manuscripts, diaries from pioneer times, from university. We have university archives, so we have historical records from BYU.'
This event happens once a year every October during Archives Month.