In this amazing modern age, swabbing the inside of your cheek can illuminate your family tree and introduce you to ancestors and relatives in faraway places or times. I find that technology astounding, maybe even a bit frightening. I also wonder if the commercial tools that make this information available to us for a modest sum may often raise more questions than they answer.
While there is a benefit to knowing your family roots, there is also greater value potentially in coming to understand the stories behind the people in your family, stories that are not revealed by DNA. This is where the work of the Central Arkansas Library System's Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art comes in.
The staff at the Roberts Library, which includes the Encyclopedia of Arkansas and Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, strives to tell the story of our state by collecting thousands of letters, photos and other media. And they work diligently to make those resources available to Little Rock and the other communities we serve. Rhonda Stewart is CALS' Genealogy and Local History Specialist. She is a talented research professional, but particularly celebrated for her skill and experience in tracing Black ancestry and assisting patrons in working through the challenges of researching fragmented records.
Many of our patrons are already using the resources provided here to learn about their families, uncovering the lost stories, for example, of children who were adopted by aunts and uncles or family friends. Prior to the library's involvement, these records were not accessible to our patrons in digital form. The curious would have to come to the library and pore over books and records in our research room. We love it when they visit, but we also realize that it is not always practical to come to our building, particularly for students or people whose work keeps them from going to the Roberts Library during normal business hours.
There are also workshops, conferences, expert speakers and monthly "Finding Family Facts" events to help teach people ways to discover their past and how to preserve and tell family stories for future generations. One of the newest programs from the Butler Center is the DIY Memory Lab, where patrons can utilize scanners and other equipment to help capture and memorialize their families' histories.
Although the library's Butler Center focuses on family and community history, the work there is not confined to those important interests. For example, in 2021, through a series of community history projects, archivists at CALS began mapping Little Rock in two distinct projects. The Mapping Downtown Little Rock Project uses historical photographs and juxtaposes them against modern digital images to show how the city's downtown architectural landscape has changed over the years.
Additionally, Roberts Library staff are working on the Lost West Ninth Street Project, an area of Little Rock that was once the center of a thriving African American community. Black businesses, homes and churches in the city closed as a result of urban renewal programs and the construction of Interstate 630. The library is exploring and preserving the history of this part of our community and the losses we suffered in the name of "progress" by digitizing manuscripts and photos.
The library's Encyclopedia of Arkansas (EOA), a free, authoritative online source of information about the rich history, geography and culture of Arkansas--and the only state encyclopedia in the nation hosted by a public library system--complements these other efforts.
Thanks to a startup grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and the vision of then Butler Center director Tom Dillard, and with generous present-day support from funders including the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, this all-encompassing anthology of Arkansas history is researched, written, and edited one article at a time. It now contains more than 6,600 entries and is expanding every month. Reliable information on topics as different as long-ago steamboat disasters, women who have served in the state Legislature throughout the state's history, and the (probably mythical) Lake Conway Monster can be found there.
In 2021, the EOA had 1.6 million website users and 3.3 million page views. Website analytics reveal that the EOA, available any time of day from any device, served as an indispensable tool for teachers and students pursuing virtual learning during the pandemic. The EOA's virtual programs have allowed scholars and experts to connect with EOA users throughout Arkansas and around the world. With a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council the EOA has been adding alt-text for users who are visually impaired. Slowly, we are translating EOA content into languages other than English.
If Little Rock voters approve the proposal on the May 24 primary ballot to renew property taxes that pay for capital improvements, CALS will have project funds to enhance the library's digital capacity for preserving family records and community histories.
That means more of our individual and collective stories survive for generations to come. And perhaps we gain a better understanding of the challenges of today and tomorrow.
Nate Coulter is executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System.