General Conference sessions prior to 1971

Hello,

Does anyone know if recordings of General Conference sessions prior to 1971 are available anywhere?

Thanks

I don't know about recordings, but the talks are available in text form:
http://ldsmediatalk.com/2012/01/11/olde ... nferences/
http://scriptures.byu.edu/gc-historical/

You might also try asking via the Feedback tool:
https://www.lds.org/tools/feedback?lang ... conference

I'm not sure when the church started recording audio of conference (anyone have any idea?) but I assume there are some recordings before 1971... 1971 is the year when the Ensign / New Era / Friend started, so that's probably why they chose that year as the limit.

I'm really looking for audio files of conference addresses prior to 1971. Elder Richard L. Evans in particular, as he always had a deep, peaceful, comforting voice.

1971 is a pretty firm stop on this stuff. I doubt you'll ever see official church sponsored publishing beyond that date.

johnshaw wrote:1971 is a pretty firm stop on this stuff. I doubt you'll ever see official church sponsored publishing beyond that date.

Any particular reason for that?

1971 is when Correlation started reviewing content (coincides with release of the modern Church Magazines.) Anything before 1971 is not Correlated which would need to be done before official release.

...but I'm going to bet that if there's anything disturbing before 1971 then someone has already made a big deal about it on the Internet somewhere.

Try explaining that to the Church Correlation Department.

russelljd wrote:1971 is when Correlation started reviewing content (coincides with release of the modern Church Magazines.) Anything before 1971 is not Correlated which would need to be done before official release.

Pretty good reason. I was wondering if it was availability or condition of the media.

mrrad wrote:...but I'm going to bet that if there's anything disturbing before 1971 then someone has already made a big deal about it on the Internet somewhere.

'71 is so pre-internet, I doubt if it was looked at that critically or any issues achieved enough 'mass' to carry over to the internet era.

Or to put it another way, there's a lot of things in society in general from pre-internet that are missing today.

russellhltn wrote:

russelljd wrote:1971 is when Correlation started reviewing content (coincides with release of the modern Church Magazines.) Anything before 1971 is not Correlated which would need to be done before official release.

Pretty good reason. I was wondering if it was availability or condition of the media.

Video recordings exist for at least a decade before the 70s and pieces are released on occasion. One example is President Monson's first talk as a newly called Apostle available at http://bcove.me/behovq1r

russelljd wrote:Video recordings exist for at least a decade before the 70s and pieces are released on occasion. One example is President Monson's first talk as a newly called Apostle available at http://bcove.me/behovq1r

Yes, but I was wondering if the pre-1971 archive was in such bad shape that it didn't make sense to do a mass-release. Also the VTRs that would play that format have long since been retired. It may be too expensive to convert en mass except as needed for special reasons.

russellhltn wrote:Yes, but I was wondering if the pre-1971 archive was in such bad shape that it didn't make sense to do a mass-release. Also the VTRs that would play that format have long since been retired. It may be too expensive to convert en mass except as needed for special reasons.

They've all been digitized for preservation purposes. Given the age of the media they were recorded on they were starting to deteriorate and the Church History department went through a major migration effort to save anything that had any doctrinal or historical significance (such as General Conference.)

For those with access to the church library across the street from the conference center in salt lake City, you'll be surprised at the stuff you have access to there.

Audio from 1936, 1938-2012 and video from 1949 to 2017 can be found online here for the general conferences during those years:

https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org ... -resources

Thank you so much for posting that information here! It's great to see the Church's continuing commitment to transparency, and corresponding trust in individual members to be able to process and understand potentially difficult topics. As well as the democratization of information access, which enables each of us to better comprehend the Lord's work in our day.

Aren't the audio conference talks wonderful? Especially from the 1970s. Their love and testimony, not to mention the Spirit can be felt. In this day and age the church is on the defense more than ever, and things are quite fragile PR wise versus how things were back then. I was able to get the cassette tapes off of EBAY of the conferences dating back to 1974 starting back in the 2001 time frame and after, before they had it online. I especially enjoyed the leadership sessions and other sessions that were held during conference week and were recorded back then.

You actually can access the text for older General Conference talks!

I found a link to various sources.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/chu ... s?lang=eng