501-918-3025
calsfoundation@cals.org
calsfoundation@cals.org
A Word from the Roberts Library: Research, Events, and Art in the New Year
Happy New Year!
Wow – I have so many things to tell you about! I know that your time and attention are valuable, so I’ll touch only on the high spots.
Our new building-mates have settled in well. Mini-Main is in full swing – you can browse, pick up holds, use the computer lab, enjoy story hour, and get your questions answered just as you could in the Main Library. (More info. here.) The renovations of the Main Library are revving up – I’m just glad all the dust will be across the street!
Our 2023 David Stricklin Fellow visited us in November. Look out for a blog post soon from Lisa Childs about her research adventures at the Roberts Library.
The new year has us, as always, looking forward to Black History Month in February and Women’s History Month in March. Be sure to consult RobertsLibrary.org and CALS.org for plenty of information about the events that we’ll be involved with all over the library system.
We have lots of art exhibitions and activities coming up, including exhibitions in the Roberts Library Underground Gallery and throughout the CALS system. On view now through January 27 in the CALS Hillary Rodham Clinton Library & Learning Center is From the Vault: Art for the Young at Heart from the CALS Permanent Collection. In the Underground Gallery is Courtesy of the Collectors: Portraits of African Americans in Photographs, Paintings, and Drawings, on view through March 30.
The good people at UA Little Rock Downtown have continued to be generous with their time and space. We will enjoy Legacies & Lunch there on the first Wednesday of every month for the foreseeable future. We’ve enjoyed several fun Second Friday Art Nights there, but in January we moved to the CALS Rock It! Lab (formerly the Cox Building) on the opposite end of Library Square. We’ll be more involved with local artists and musicians in that space in the coming year – stay tuned to our events page for more information.
I’m so proud of our staff and all that they accomplish. Long-term staff leaders Guy Lancaster and Brian Robertson both recently published articles in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly (read more about that here). Our newest staff member, Genealogy and Local History Specialist Bekah Ervin, just received her Master of Library and Information Science and a graduate certificate in archival studies from Louisiana State University. I wonder what our staff’s next accomplishment will be!
I’m wishing you the best new year ever! Come visit us in person or online – we’ll be glad to see you.
GW
by Glenn Whaley, manager of the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art
