Recurring Programs & Speaking Requests
CALS Roberts Library
Recurring Programs
The Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art hosts programs across the Central Arkansas Library System. Our recurring monthly programs include:
Legacies & Lunch is a hybrid free monthly program of CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies about Arkansas-related topics that is held on the first Wednesday of every month. This program is live-streamed to YouTube and the recording will be available immediately following the event.
At our monthly 2FAN event, attendees will be greeted with local artists selling their work, art demonstrations, social knitting, a craft table, a DJ or performer playing music, and light refreshments and libations. Stop by each second Friday to chat with local artists, shop locally from Arkansas makers, take in some music, and sip wine with friends! Keep up to date on locations and changes for this monthly event through our events calendar.
Are you looking for a writing workshop group? Writing All Year is a place to share your work-in-progress with other writers. We meet on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month to give and receive encouragement, insight, and feedback in a safe and respectful environment. Our objective: to improve the work with kindness and compassion. If this sounds like something you’ve been looking for, please join us. Everyone welcome. Presented by CALS Writing Circle.
Discover how to preserve, store, and organize your personal papers, photos, scrapbooks, and more! In this program from the Central Arkansas Library System, you’ll learn how to prepare your items for digitization and organize your collections. Plus, learn about the CALS DIY Memory Lab and how it can help you preserve your family history for future generations!
Need a Speaker?
We offer programs and guest speakers to groups of all sizes and ages. We will come and speak to your group about Arkansas history, CALS Art Collection, Butler Center of Arkansas Studies collections, and Personal Archiving / DIY Memory Lab.
For Encyclopedia of Arkansas programming, please visit their website.
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Arkansas Women in Wartime
Learn about Arkansas women’s assistance on the home front and abroad during World War I and World War II from the CALS Butler Center collection.
Speaker: Danielle Afsordeh
Length of Program: 1 hour (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
Beyond Polka and Pierogi: Pulaski County’s Little Poland
Learn about the rich history of the Marche community and see some of the photographs and documents that have been collected as part of an ongoing community engagement initiative.
Speaker: Danielle Afsordeh
Length of Program: 45 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
Crafting History: The Suffrage Movement in Arkansas
Learn about the fight for women’s suffrage in Arkansas from the collections of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. This session also includes instructions and a template for creating your own suffrage pennant.
Speaker: Danielle Afsordeh
Length of Program: 45 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: All ages -
Highlighting Little Rock’s Historically Black Communities
Hear an overview of Little Rock’s historically Black communities and their enduring significance. The talk will highlight related materials from the CALS Butler Center collection.
Speaker: Danielle Afsordeh
Length of Program: 1 hour (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
Threads of History: Arkansas Women and Embroidery
Learn about the history of women and embroidery in Arkansas from the collections of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. This session also includes a handout with beginner embroidery stitches and a supply list for a beginner project.
Speaker: Danielle Afsordeh
Length of Program: 45 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: All ages -
Unfinished Business: The Fight for the ERA in Arkansas
Description: Learn about the fight for the creation and ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in Arkansas and create reproductions of vintage women’s movement campaign buttons from the CALS Butler Center collection.
Speaker: Danielle Afsordeh
Length of Program: 1 hour (with activity & questions)
Age Group: All ages -
What We Wore: Fashion in Photos, 1850s to 1929
Learn about eight decades of fashion from photos in the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and how Arkansas women conformed (or didn’t) with the fashion trends of the day.
Speaker: Heather Register Zbinden
Length of Program: 45 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
Bitter Sacrifices: Japanese American Incarceration in World War II Arkansas
Between 1942 and 1945, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast were incarcerated at ten centers around the country, including at Rohwer and Jerome, Arkansas, for looking like the enemy. The CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies holds the single largest collection of art and writing from the camps. Learn about this dark chapter in American and Arkansas history and see some of the creative works left behind.
Speaker: Heather Register Zbinden
Length of Program: 35 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
Chasing the Dress: An Arkansan in the Court of Tsar Nicholas II
Katherine Carson Breckinridge of Pine Bluff attended the wedding and coronation of Nicholas II. How did an American woman adapt to the grandeur and majesty of life within a 300-year-old Imperial dynasty? Did she get pulled into the regal life of the gilded palaces, court dress, and rubbing shoulders with royalty? Or did she stick to the principles she was raised with – economy of person and strict Presbyterian doctrine? Her letters give us insight into the life of an Arkansan in the court of Tsar Nicholas II.
Speaker: Heather Register Zbinden
Length of Program: 45 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
History Is Written By The Defeated: How Arkansas Got Its Confederate Monuments
As the American Centennial celebrations took shape in 1876, southern women began to shape the narrative of Lost Cause. By the 1920s the United Daugthers of the Confederacy had erected monuments and statues to the Confederate dead all over the South and dozens in Arkansas. These monuments would continue to cast a shadow on American history into the 21st century. Learn about these monuments in Arkansas, the women behind them, and the myths they perpetuate.
Speaker: Heather Register Zbinden
Length of Program: 45 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
Getting to Know Your Historic Home
Learn about resources available through the Central Arkansas Library System to research your historic property and its inhabitants with a property research demonstration.
Speaker: Danielle Afsordeh
Length of Program: 1 hour (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
Mobile Memory Lab
Request the Mobile Memory Lab for your event, festival, or family reunion group. A CALS Roberts Library staff member will bring the Mobile Memory Lab, set it up, and scan a limited number of items for guests. Great paired with the Personal Archiving program.
Speaker: Meredith Li
Length of Program: 45 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
Getting Started With Genealogy at CALS
The Central Arkansas Library System subscribes to many genealogy databases including Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, Fire Insurance Maps Online, and others. Learn how to use them, where you can access them, and when it is time to get off the computer and explore what we have to offer in the Roberts Library Research Room.
Speaker: CALS Butler Center staff
Length of Program: 45 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: Adults -
Personal Archiving
Learn how to organize your personal papers, photos, scrapbooks, and other items to digitize and store them for future generations. And find out more about CALS DIY Memory Lab and how to use it to preserve your family history.
Speaker: Meredith Li
Length of Program: 45 minutes (with questions)
Age Group: Adults
