Category: CALS Roberts Library Blog

Arkansas has an extensive history of transformative contributions by African American psychologists in the fields of psychology, education, and social justice. On February 28, 2020, the Arkansas Association of Black Psychology Professionals (AABPP) in collaboration with the Diversity Committee of the Arkansas Psychological Association, Philander Smith College’s Social Justice Institute, and the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site hosted “Historical Contributions of African American Psychologists from Arkansas” on the campus of Philander Smith College in Little Rock.

The CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies’ manuscripts division has recently digitized materials from the Fred T. Jones Sr. Collection, which was donated to the Butler Center by Jones’s daughter Marie Jones Griffin in 1997. Fred T. Jones was a physician and pioneer in providing insurance and medical care to African Americans in Arkansas and Louisiana,

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner (it’s on Sunday!), we’re excited to have some one-of-a-kind pieces of Arkansas art that are perfect for that special someone.

Roger Buchanan makes amazing “treasure boxes” that can be used by anyone to store their jewelry and treasured items, and Richard Prewitt just brought in some sparkling jewels in the form of transformed vintage watches.

The CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies is pleased to announce the creation of 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, useful for providing context and illustrating spatial relationships.

The Galleries at Library Square will host the exhibition Transformation: Artworks by Sandra Sell and Elizabeth Weber through April 24. On view in the Underground Gallery, this exhibition showcases the sculptures and paintings of two of Arkansas’s outstanding artists. Sandra Sell explores the contrast and rhythmic tension inherent in carved wood,

The Central Arkansas Library System has recently added more databases to our selection of online resources. A database of particular interest to genealogists and researchers of Arkansas history is NewspaperARCHIVE, a small database of historical Arkansas newspapers. Researchers who use Newspapers.com will see some similarities between the two databases, but the NewspaperARCHIVE database has some newspapers that are not included in Newspapers.com.

On the afternoon of April 27, 2016, I started my first drive from Washington DC to Little Rock. That same day, the Atlantic published a long feature article, written by Alana Semuels, about my destination: “How Segregation Has Persisted in Little Rock.” I remember a friend texting me the link the next day,

I’m always hesitant to wish time away. I try to resist wishing for school to be out, for vacation to be here, for the heat of summer to be over (well, if I’m honest, I usually wish for that). Almost the only time I wish time would pass more quickly is when I’m stuck on an airplane that’s sitting on the tarmac for a couple of hours or when I’m waiting for a really good meal to be ready to eat.

The CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies is excited to offer a new database of fire insurance maps to our patrons. The database, Fire Insurance Maps online, or FIMo, allows patrons to view, annotate, and download images from full-color Sanborn fire insurance maps for Arkansas. The following are some highlights of FIMo’s more innovative features.

I have spent nearly two decades in some capacity or another engaged in matters of Arkansas history and heritage, and while I have absorbed a wealth of scholarship, and produced some of my own, there is one question about the collective soul of Arkansans whose answer continues to elude me:

Why don’t we take ourselves more seriously?