When you blog, what are some authoritative sources you link to for your readers? As a blogger, I try to find and use authoritative sources of information about the Church in my posts. If you’ve done any family history, then you’re probably aware of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ work on the importance of citing primary sources of information. Similarly, when you link to other web sites to explain basic doctrines of the restored gospel you want to be sure you’re giving your readers accurate information.

For example, let’s say you want to mention the restoration of the priesthood in one of your posts. You want to find a page on the web that describes how the Aaronic Priesthood was restored and link to this page from your blog.

As Larry mentioned in a previous post (Answering Questions About the Church), the Gospel Topics section contains authoritative, yet brief explanations to many Church doctrines and practices. Using the example above, you could provide a link to the Aaronic Priesthood page since a description of the restoration of that priesthood is included under the “Additional Information” tab.

Other sources on Church web sites include:

• Leader Biographies contains the official biographies of the leaders of the Church. These are useful when referring to a present Church leader.
• Core Beliefs: How and Why Are Mormons Different? contains answers to basic questions concerning the restoration of the gospel, the plan of salvation, the purpose of temples, the missionary program, etc. Although this page is geared to “newsmakers”, it provides concise information on basic beliefs.
• The General Conference page contains archives of general conference addresses. This section is helpful when you want to cite a specific general conference address in a blog post.
• The Scriptures section provides online access to the four standard works of the Church and includes helpful study aids such as the Guide to the Scriptures, the Bible Dictionary, the Joseph Smith Translation, and others. These are particularly useful when you want to cite a particular scripture or need to provide additional context for a scripture reference.
• The Presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints section provides “basic facts” about each Church president in this dispensation. This section is useful when you want to refer to any Church president and it also includes a section on President Thomas S. Monson.

Some of my favorite non-Church web site authorities include:

• MormonWiki by the More Good Foundation which contains a lot of good content since its stated purpose is to act as an “incubator of content” about the Church.
• The General Authority Pages provide useful information about all the general authorities of the Church in this dispensation.
• The online version of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism provides a wealth of information about the restored gospel in almost 1,500 articles. Although this is not an official publication of the Church, it does cover a wide-range of subjects.

These lists are by no means exhaustive. Many more sections could be cited, but it does provide a starting point. What are your favorite sites or sections of web sites that contain useful information about the Church?

Bookmark: