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On view through Saturday, October 1:

Yard Work: Inspirations Found in Our Own Backyards

Underground Gallery, Galleries & Bookstore at Library Square

CALS Roberts Library

Is it too hot to spend time in your own yard? Come to the air-conditioned CALS Roberts Library Underground Gallery to feel like you are in nature without breaking a sweat.

As one of its mapping projects focusing on community history, the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies created a digital exhibit documenting the history of Little Rock’s West Ninth Street, once a center of commerce and culture for the city’s African Americans. The project uses a mapping program to create an interactive narrative,

Work can be like the proverbial iceberg—you don’t see most of its mass because it is hidden under an expanse of water.

That is to say that any job, even one with a predominantly public side, entails a lot of labor hidden from view of those being served. A teacher spends time not only in the classroom in front of students but also alone at a desk writing quizzes or preparing lectures.

James Logan Morgan Jr. was a teacher, historian, and minister. He was born on September 13, 1940, in Oil Trough (Independence County) to James Logan Morgan Sr. (1910–1995) and Eva Irene Landrum Morgan (1922–2009). Morgan graduated from Newport High School in 1958 and earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in history and business from Arkansas College (now Lyon College) in Batesville (Independence County),

The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art acquired the Little Rock Fire Department (LRFD) collection in 2011. The collection contains a great deal of information on the history of the city’s fire department.

In January 2022, staff members in the Research Services Division finished digitizing and uploading more than forty items out of the collection.

If you have watched many movies from the famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, you have probably seen, in the bleak Scandinavian landscape he often depicts, ancient stone walls lining rural farmsteads or yards. These may seem like nothing more than a background detail while his characters in the foreground undergo exquisite crises of faith or identity,

All those letters in the attic… Or basement. Or shed. Or barn. Or under the bed.

You get the idea.

Family papers and photographs. We all have them. And for most of us, we have them stored as an unorganized mess somewhere out of the way. Many of these materials have stories of their own—how they survived from the early and mid-twentieth century to still exist in the early twenty-first century.

Father’s Day is approaching, and it is never the wrong time to think about birthday and other holiday gifts for parents, grandparents, friends, and other loved ones. Books about Arkansas’s fascinating history and culture just might fit the bill, and Butler Center Books has published many popular titles for those Arkansas history lovers in your life.

In recognition of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, celebrated each year in May, CALS Roberts Library staff members Brian Robertson and Danielle Afsordeh began searching through the thousands of photographs in the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies’ collections to highlight AAPI content. During that search, Robertson came across the photograph below.

In this photo from the Streetscapes photograph collection (PHO.7),

Some of the most recent additions have come from Cabot’s Museum of American History and from the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

The Museum of American History, formerly known as The Museum/Cabot High, is the only student-founded and -operated museum of history in Arkansas. The award-winning museum, which is owned by the Cabot School District,