The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received a $50,000 grant to work on a digitization project.
The grant will go to the university’s Center for Arkansas History and Culture to digitize archival maps, documents, architectural drawings and photographs related to urban renewal in Little Rock.
The Mapping Renewal Project will take 18 months.
“In the 1960s, urban renewal in central Little Rock comprised one of the largest demolition and clearance programs in the country,” a news release said. “As a result of renewal efforts, Little Rock’s Central high district shifted from being a majority-white to a predominantly African-American neighborhood. The Ninth Street Corridor, the city’s African-American business district, was cleared of its inhabitants and businesses to make way for freeway construction.”
The project will make historic documents from this time available for free online.
The grant is from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The team working on the project also will attach geospatial data to the digital files so that computers and Geographic Information Systems can be used for analysis. Focus groups will be held in the community to gather input on how to describe and present these resources in a meaningful way.