Category: CALS Roberts Library Blog

As the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas heads into our twentieth anniversary year (the EOA debuted online in May 2006), we thought we’d share some numbers from the past year.

In 2025, the CALS EOA had a total of 2.3 million sessions, 2.3 million users engaged, and 3.4 million page views. That’s an average of about 200,000 sessions,

As I type these words, there is a button for the Microsoft Copilot, the company’s AI “assistant,” lurking in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen—its rainbow color a bright contrast to everything else on my screen, just begging to be engaged.

Do you see it? Microsoft would be delighted for me to click on that and make some use of that feature,

A leaf found on the ground captures the imagination of a six-year-old, who examines the colors, the shape, the texture, and the touch. The nourishment of this leaf came from the tree as it transported water and minerals from its roots to the leaf. The leaf produces food for the tree through a process called photosynthesis.

A broken relationship and the death of a great-uncle led to my move from Little Rock to Chicago, Illinois. I didn’t last a year in the city.

My grandmother’s eldest sister needed someone to assist her in daily errands and routines. She also had a dental procedure scheduled, and her fear of dentists was the primary reason for my arrival in Chicago.

Wintertime is here, and with it comes chances for some fun (and free!) art experiences at CALS!

Upcoming Workshops and Activities

Make Your Mark: Art Journaling for Fun and for Life
January 17, 2026, 10 a.m. to noon
CALS Roberts Library, 401 President Clinton Ave. 

On the night of November 11, 2025, Veterans’ Day, an out-of-state friend dropped me a line to say that I should head outside, as the northern lights could be seen in the sky. It’s rare that the aurora descends this far south—it only does so if the sun has thrown out a particularly powerful coronal mass ejection (CME),

As a family tradition, for each of our birthdays, we would request a special homemade meal for dinner. I can vividly remember my eleventh birthday. My mom called me for supper, and I ran to the table, sitting expectantly as my mom set down a piping hot glass dish full of scalloped potatoes.

This was my annual tradition.

As an intern with the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies this summer, I combed through the Small Manuscript and Arkansas Labor collections for any materials that dealt with labor organizing in the state. I found, among other things, strike songs penned by railroad workers, frantic telegrams dictated by union officials, and descriptions of blackened eyes and terminal illness from the children of coal miners.

Andrew Hamilton (Drew) Lander was a businessman and civic leader who spent five years as a member of the Little Rock City Council. His letters, donated to the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies by his family, reveal a different part of his life, when he was serving in the United States Army before and during World War II.

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,