At this point, the sense I have is that Mormon attitudes towards literature and media stabilized by the middle of the 20th century, and hasn’t changed too much since then. LDS leaders generally praise classic works, especially those from at least 50 years before the discourse, while cautioning against the bad in media, especially the portrayal of sex, violence and profanity. And speakers often complain about the declining values in the media.

Perhaps the following excerpts from an article by Spencer W. Kimball and his wife Camilla will give a sense of what I mean. In most ways their comments could appear in a Church magazine today, except for the references to current technology.

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The idea that the audience might somehow control what the author writes could be considered a kind of post-modern concept, given the traditional view that literary works originate with authors and are then transmitted to readers. Somehow there is an assumption traditionally that the author is independent of his audience.

Of course that has never really been true, and even early in the development of literature authors acknowledge that they crafted their works to suit their audience and patrons. Still, the idea that a work might have been written quite differently had it been composed in another place and time can be somewhat jarring if you haven’t thought much about it. And, I suppose, it can be even more jarring if the works you are thinking about are considered scripture.

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It is difficult to pass on the idea that our culture, Mormon culture, has produced things of value. It is something that we fight today and something that we have fought in the past. And the assumption that our culture is without much of value comes from within as much as without. When people aren’t familiar with the cultural goods that the Mormon people have produced, its hard to convince them that what is there is worth perusing.

While we struggle to address this problem today, it may help to recognize that others have tried to address it in the past also. And among those who have tried is Levi Edgar Young.

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Among the General Authorities of my own youth, perhaps the biggest promoter of books and learning was Sterling W. Sill. As a teen I received as a gift and read his The Majesty of Books (1974) and it reinforced my love of books and belief that they are, as Sill claims, the greatest of human innovations.

The following excerpts are from one of his most memorable and most literature-oriented conference talks, Medicine for the Soul, given in 1972.

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Whatever your impressions of Mormon attitudes toward education, books and libraries, it is hard to find stronger praise than that in the following excerpt, part of an address given at the YMMIA conference in June 1888. While I haven’t included the final call of the discourse, by the end its author, James A. Langton, has called for an ambitious system of libraries established by the YMMIA, funded by “philanthropic men” and designed to benefit the public by providing quality literature.

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The advent of ebooks and other digital media is making many of us rethink our personal libraries, just as it is making the various libraries around us  adjust acquisition policies and revise collections and procedures. While he didn’t face a similar technological change, in the following excerpt from a YMMIA conference talk J. M. Tanner gives his ideas about what should be in a library. He isn’t actually talking about personal libraries (something beyond the imagination of the average listener of his day), but instead the libraries established for each MIA—Mutual Improvement Association, the ward and stake-based groups of the time meant to improve the lives (religious and otherwise) of youth and young adults. Among the policies Tanner advocates is acquiring what he calls a “running library”—materials like periodicals acquired through ongoing subscriptions.

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