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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then we would need millions of words to describe the contents of the CALS Butler Center’s Pulaski County Photograph Collection (BC.PHO.2.A). This collection was started when the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Central Arkansas Library System was founded in 1997, and it now includes more than 3,100 items.

In March 2024, the Arkansas Humanities Council hosted the inaugural Next Gen conference to connect emerging humanities professionals with careers in the field. During the conference, gifted and talented (GT) educators Brenda Rush (Malvern School District) and Laura West (Hot Springs School District) gave a presentation on place-based learning. This educational technique goes outside the classroom to allow students to learn new skills specific to a location.

The Central Arkansas Library System hosted another successful genealogy workshop on October 5, 2024, in the CALS Ron Robinson Theater. This year, it was in-person only, so participants got to meet each other, enjoy a free lunch, and spend the day immersed in all things genealogy. The sessions were recorded, though, for others to enjoy and learn from,

The online Encyclopedia of Arkansas (EOA), a project of the Central Arkansas Library System, has launched two major interactive features aimed at making Arkansas history more fun and accessible, as well as some other enhancements, such as improved browsing and a day-by-day history calendar.

“Earlier this year,” said EOA editor Guy Lancaster,

Spiritualism has a long history in Arkansas, intertwined with the profound impacts of the Civil War and subsequent societal changes. Originating as a belief system that suggests the dead can communicate with the living, spiritualism gained traction in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.

The devastation of the Civil War—with Arkansas losing over 10,000 residents in the fighting—created a landscape ripe for spiritualist practices.

Recently, I undertook some freelance work for the Arkansas Times, sifting through their back issues to find some articles to be republished in their fiftieth anniversary special—both some oddities of the past and some article still relevant today. Not only was it a fascinating journey back in time, but it also offered an insight into how a periodical like this stays around.

The CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture are partnering to celebrate Home Movie Day 2024–this weekend!

Get ready to relive cherished memories and celebrate the art of home movies on Saturday, October 19, from 1-4 PM at CALS Roberts Library on the third floor.

Academics spend a lot of time applying for grants to fund our research—often ones that are tenuous matches at best for our projects, ones that we have to massage our research proposal to fit into. I didn’t have that problem for the Stricklin Research Fellowship. It’s the only research grant offered by an archival research institution in Arkansas.

This fall offers many opportunities to view and experience art at the Central Arkansas Library System!

Exhibitions

From the Vault: A Survey of the CALS Art Collection

On view through Monday, December 30, 2024
Underground Gallery, CALS Roberts Library

The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) houses more than just books.

“I, José da Silvestra, who am now dying of hunger in the little cave where no snow is on the north side of the nipple of the southernmost of the two mountains I have named Sheba’s Breasts, write this in the year 1590 with a cleft bone upon a remnant of my raiment, my blood being the ink…”

So reads the beginning of a document that sparks a search for ancient treasure in the 1885 novel King Solomon’s Mines by H.