PROVO, UTAH

What started as a collection of photographs BYU religion professors were using for their class instruction has grown to become an online archive of more than 4,000 religious images available to Church members everywhere.

The downloadable images with detailed descriptions are available at relarchive.byu.edu (and on lds.org), and are proving valuable to seminary, institute, Sunday school and other religion teachers all over the world.

In 1999, religious studies professors, Richard Draper, Rex Reeve and Dennis Wright attempted to put all of their photos and artwork into a database that could be shared by all faculty members on campus, not just those in the religion department. Brother Wright said their efforts came about from a need for a "library of images to teach courses with." They soon discovered that more space was needed to house all of their images, and hit on the idea of making them available to religion teachers off campus as well.

The university's Harold B. Lee Library was able to help the professors scan, digitize, catalog and post the images onto web pages for all to see. Through the efforts of the library's digital projects team — led by metadata cataloger, Kayla Willey — and with the aid of state-of-the-art equipment donated by Ira and Mary Lou Fulton, the online collection has exceeded everyone's expectations. With additional grant funding, Brother Wright believes the archive can triple in size.

The Lee Library is adding about 100 new images a month to the database, which can be found through its Web site as well (www.library.byu.edu).

The archive contains mostly photographs of everything from Biblical places to modern-day prophets including historical pioneer landmarks, newly constructed temples and specific theme images. All of them are accompanied by descriptions so that 40,000 Church Educational System instructors can choose and use correct images for their 160 or so lessons a year.

As Brother Draper puts it, viewers can learn more about the images with the help of the descriptions. "They'll not only see the picture, but they'll say, 'Oh, that's what that is,' about particular shots."

Kelly Ogden and Kenny Mays are two religion instructors who have contributed thousands of photographs to the image archive. Brother Ogden, a former seminary teacher as well as a guide, teacher and associate director at BYU's Jerusalem Center, spent 14 years living and traveling in the Middle East. About 2,000 of his aging slides are found on the archive.

Brother Mays is an institute teacher in Salt Lake City and has taken photos of historical Church landmarks over the past 20 years. He has recorded the images for the purpose of sharing them with fellow teachers who will probably never get to personally view such places. "It has been a remarkable and humbling privilege to be a small part of something that has the potential to help so many," he said.

Brother Mays said he is motivated by President Gordon B. Hinckley's words about not letting the memory of the early saints be forgotten. "He is truly a remarkable man and prophet. I don't have the verbal skills to express how much of an influence he has been on me and my part in this project."