Preserving History from Within: Reflections on the 2025 Religious Community History Seminar

The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the CALS Roberts Library and the CALS DIY Memory Lab recently launched a new initiative designed to help Arkansas faith communities preserve and interpret their historical records. Supported with funds from the Mellon Foundation, the Religious Community History Seminar brings together ten diverse faith communities from across central Arkansas to explore archival preservation, digitization, and the public presentation of their histories.

This project builds upon our ongoing efforts to collaborate with communities documenting local histories and expanding representation in Arkansas archives. Recent partnerships, such as the work with the Marche community to preserve the story of its Polish Catholic heritage, have demonstrated the importance of accessible tools, training, and shared spaces for preserving community memory. Through resources like the DIY Memory Lab and programming, the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) empowers individuals and organizations to digitize and safeguard their photographs, documents, and audiovisual materials.

Religious Community History Seminar 2025

Over the course of three instructional sessions, participating organizations received training and resources to help identify, organize, and care for materials of enduring value within their own faith communities. Between sessions, community representatives were given continuing guidance and resources to begin their work. The program emphasized both the technical and interpretive aspects of preservation, ensuring that these histories are not only safeguarded but also made accessible and meaningful to future generations.

The series began in August with “Preserving the History,” led by Meredith Li, DIY Memory Lab coordinator, and Danielle Afsordeh, CALS Butler Center community outreach archivist. We invited community members to participate in a community guidelines activity to co-create ground rules for interacting with one another in an intergenerational interfaith environment. Participants examined the principles of archival organization and storage, focusing on methods to ensure the longevity and accessibility of records documenting religious life.

In September, the cohort reconvened for “Digitization and Preservation,” which introduced the digitization tools available through the CALS DIY Memory Lab. Participants learned best practices for converting photographs, audiovisual materials, and documents into digital formats, as well as strategies for managing and maintaining born-digital files.

The final session, “Telling Your Community’s Story,” held in October, explored approaches to public history interpretation. Participants received guidance on developing short written histories and selecting representative images and documents to share in a digital format, as well as digital tools that can be used to share histories via the web. In session survey responses, cohort members were very pleased with the information provided and have found useful ways to apply it to their individual situations.

Participating Communities

For this pilot program, we received eighteen applications and were honored to have ten faith communities join us in the cohort. The cohort model afforded us the opportunity to not only have diverse representation in the project but also provide an opportunity for interfaith and intergenerational community building in a library setting. Cohort members also can continue being in community with one another through an online resource sharing and communications hub.

Religious Community History Seminar 2025 Cohort

• Bethel Methodist Church, Jacksonville, AR
  A Methodist church founded in 1864
• Cross Street Christian Church, Little Rock, AR
  A Disciples of Christ church founded in 1908
• Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas, Little Rock, AR
  A nondenominational church founded in 2001
• Our Lady of Good Counsel, Little Rock, AR
  A Roman Catholic church founded in 1894
• Pleasant Hill CME Church, Little Rock, AR
  A Christian Methodist Episcopal church founded in the 1920s
• Second Presbyterian Church, Little Rock, AR
  A Presbyterian (PCUSA) church founded in 1882
• Saint Anne’s Church, North Little Rock, AR
  A Roman Catholic Church founded in 1909
• Saint Paul Maumelle UMC, Little Rock, AR
  A United Methodist church founded 1870
• Taste of Olam Haba, Little Rock, AR
  A pluralistic cross-denominational Jewish community founded in 2021
• White Memorial United Methodist Church, Little Rock, AR
  A United Methodist church founded 1889

Each participating group will produce a brief history of their community and select ten items digitized during the seminar to submit to CALS Butler Center with descriptions of the materials. These contributions will be incorporated into a new online project created by CALS Roberts Library staff.

Coming in 2026

The Roberts Library will premiere this digital project in early spring 2026, highlighting the participating communities and their contributions to Arkansas’s religious and cultural landscape. By documenting and sharing these histories, the initiative seeks to strengthen relationships between faith communities and archival institutions while expanding the scope of materials available to researchers and the public.

This project was made possible with generous support from the Mellon Foundation.

by Danielle Afsordeh, Butler Center/Roberts Library community outreach archivist and programs coordinator & Meredith Li, DIY Memory Lab coordinator

 

TAGS

Butler Banner Fall 2025