SunstoneBlog

By Clay Whipkey, Guest Contributor

If there is a common thread in the Sunstone community, it might just be the fascination with knowing insider information about things which are complex and mysterious. So if you’ll allow me to channel Leonard Arrington for a moment, I’m going to pull back the curtain on the Sunstone audio archives and tell you how you can be your own rogue adventurer in the library of rambunctious Mormon free-thinking.

It’s possible that the Sunstone audio archives are a lot like LDS Church archives, an almost unknown wealth of insight into both the ugly and the profoundly beautiful that exists within a culture and people. When I began working on the project to overhaul the web archive, I had never been to a symposium, read an issue of the magazine, or even heard a single recorded session. During the process of creating the search engine, I began listening to a few sessions, which quickly had me hooked. The range of subjects created a virtual encyclopedia of Mormonism, and a sociologist’s wildest fantasy.

Logistically, not all people can attend even one symposium, let alone all of them. And at the symposium, there are several sessions running concurrently, so you are guaranteed to miss something interesting. The audio archives enable anyone to partake even if they could not be there in the flesh. Isn’t there something inherently Mormon about the opportunity to receive enlightenment after you had initially missed that chance?

So how do you find what you seek? Well, let’s look at the Sunstone Search. In its current form, the advanced version (as opposed to the quick search field from the home page of the website) has four fields which you can use to fine-tune your search.

• Words to find: This is a text entry field where you enter your search terms. Unless you are using exact phrase, partial words will be matched (i.e. “resurrect” will be matched in the word “resurrection”).

• Types of content: This drop down selection offers the ability to search everything (default), or to narrow your search to look only at audio files (past symposium recordings), magazine articles (PDF files), or website content.

• Strictness: This selection will break your terms up into individual words and return any matches on any words (default), only if it finds all the words (in no particular order), or as an exact phrase (including spaces, *but not case-sensitive). *Note: the search is never case-sensitive.

• Fields to search: This selection allows you to search for your terms specifically in the title, only the description (what we call the “description” also includes some hidden topical keywords which are attached to each item), the author/speaker (this is good for finding all the works of a particular person), or looking for matches in any of the fields (default).

Let’s look at a few real world search examples:

1. It only took one or two exposures to the perennial Pillars of My Faith sessions for me to develop a compulsion to listen to the entire history of them. I have listened to over 30 of them from 1983 to present. Want to create a search to find all of them? Here’s how set up the fields to return a comprehensive list:

• words to find: “pillars of my faith” (two letter words, and common words like “of”, “the”, and “for” are ignored, unless you are using the exact phrase selection)
• types of content: speeches/talks - MP3
• strictness: all words
• fields to search: title

2. Suppose you just read an article by Armand Mauss and you think, “That guy is sharp!” Now you are interested in hearing his other commentary. You should be able to find all of the sessions in which he participated significantly (being the session “chair” does not count) using these options:

• words to find: “armand mauss”
• types of content: speeches/talks - MP3
• strictness: all words (you usually don’t want to use exact phrase when looking for speakers, since initials may or may not be used on different occasions)
• fields to search: author/speaker

3. On occasion I find myself piqued by a specific subject. I was thinking about writing an article about health and used the Sunstone Search to tap into several presentations on the Word of Wisdom using this configuration:

• words to find: “word of wisdom”
• types of content: speeches/talks - MP3
• strictness: exact phrase
• fields to search: all fields

4. Bonus Insider Tip! You might notice that symposium sessions are given codes which internally indicate the location, the year, and the session number. These codes can actually be used to generate search results containing all the sessions from a particular symposium. Since the search can do partial word matches, you could search for the beginning part of the code to find all sessions at the location and year. The tricky part would be knowing what the location code is, but Sunstone has been pretty consistent about that. Here is the configuration to find all the sessions from the most recent symposium in Salt Lake City:

• words to find: “SL08″ (again, not case-sensitive)
• types of content: speeches/talks - MP3
• strictness: any words
• fields to search: body/description

A note about pricing. Sunstone does charge a depreciating premium on session recordings. The price drops each year and 3 year old sessions become free downloads. I don’t have anything to do with that policy, so please direct all harassment towards the board of directors. I would bet a few substantial donations might be a good start towards the liberation of the content. Anyway, when you see search results, sessions which are still within the premium age will have a link to purchase the file. Any item that has a download link is free.

I’d like to close with my testimony that I know the Sunstone audio archives are recordings of a real people that lived on the Earth and through whom perhaps God even reveals a little of Himself… and I love my mom and dad.

Seriously, though… enjoy. There are some really cool treasures in there.

September 3rd, 2008 | Category: Faith, Featured, Mormon Studies, Sideblog, Socialization, Spirituality, Sunstone, Symposium, mormon, mormons, symposiums, technology | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL