Tag Archives: Central Arkansas Library System

NATURAL STATE NOTABLES book launched on Monday

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natural_state_notablesSchool-aged children can learn about famous Arkansans in Natural State Notables: 21 Famous People from Arkansas by Steven Teske, a new book from Butler Center Books. Teske will read from the book and sign books, which will be available for purchase, on Monday, March 4, at 4:00 p.m. in the Central Arkansas Library System’s (CALS) Children’s Library and Learning Center at 4800 W. 10th Street.

Biographies on Arkansans including Maya Angelou, Johnny Cash, Bill Clinton, John Grisham, Scottie Pippen, Winthrop Rockefeller, Mary Steenburgen, and Sam Walton highlight the accomplishments and backgrounds of some of Arkansas’s most celebrated sons and daughters. The book features pictures, timelines, and information on each Arkansan.

Natural State Notables author Steven Teske works as an archival assistant for the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. He has also written Unvarnished Arkansas about famous people in Arkansas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he co-wrote Homefront Arkansas about life in Arkansas during wartime from the war with Mexico in 1848 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the twenty-first century. He has worked for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, the Butler Center’s online resource about the state of Arkansas, and he teaches college classes in history and comparative religions for the Arkansas State University-Beebe’s campus on the Little Rock Air Force Base.

Butler Center Books is a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System. This publishing program was made possible by a gift from John G. and Dora “DeDe” Ragsdale. Butler Center Books publishes volumes that increase knowledge about and appreciation of the history and culture of Arkansas. The University of Arkansas Press in Fayetteville is the distribution agent for Butler Center Books.

The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies was founded in 1997 to promote the study and appreciation of Arkansas history and culture. The Butler Center’s research collections, art galleries, and offices are located in the Arkansas Studies Institute building at 401 President Clinton Ave. on the campus of the CALS Main Library.

The event, which will include a reception and a preview tour of the new facility, is free and open to the public. RSVP to marey@cals.org or 918-3033. The Children’s Library will open on Saturday, March 16.

CALS celebrates READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY in honor of Dr. Seuss

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CALS Celebrates Read Across America Day

read_across_americaOne fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. 

Celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday with the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) at events during Read Across America Day. Crafts and parties encourage patrons to pick a book and read with the whole family.  All events are free and open to the public.

Activities started yesterday and continue today.

At Park Plaza Mall from 11am to 2pm, there are Read Across America Day crafts.  Events at Park Plaza Mall are provided by the new Children’s Library and Learning Center, 4800 W. 10th Street, which will open to the public on March 16.

A Dr. Seuss Birthday Party will take place at the Fletcher Library today at 10am.  In addition, a Bilingual Dr. Seuss Birthday Party will be at the Main Library at 10:30am.

On Monday at 6pm, the McMath Library will host a Dr. Seuss Pajama Party.  Let’s face it, most Dr. Seuss characters look like they are wearing pajamas.

On Wednesday, the Terry Library will host a Dr. Seuss Birthday Sock Hop at 6:30pm.  No word on whether they will be Hopping on Pop.  So go and find out.

CALS libraries in Little Rock include:

  • Main Library, 100 Rock Street;
  • Dee Brown Library, 6325 Baseline Road;
  • Fletcher Library, 823 North Buchanan Street;
  • Oley E. Rooker Library, 11 Otter Creek Court;
  • Terry Library, 2015 Napa Valley Drive;
  • Thompson Library, 38 Rahling Circle;
  • Williams Library, 1800 Chester Street;
  • McMath Library, 2100 John Barrow Road.

CALS libraries in surrounding communities include:

  • Max Milam Library, 609 Aplin Avenue, Perryville;
  • Maumelle Library, 10 Lake Pointe Drive, Maumelle;
  • Esther D. Nixon Library, 703 W. Main Street, Jacksonville
  • Amy Sanders Library, 31 Shelby Drive, Sherwood

Arkansas Arts Center features Wendy Maruyama’s Executive Order 9066

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Watchtower

Wendy Maruyama
Watchtower, 2008

Exhibits look at Japanese-American internment camps during WWII

This exhibition combines two projects of Wendy Maruyama, a studio furniture maker and head of the studio furniture program at San Diego State University. These projects, the Tag Project and Executive Order 9066, together tell the story of the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.

In the Tag Project, Maruyama replicated 120,000 individual identification tags worn by the internees in the ten relocation camps, including two in Arkansas. Maruyama assembled the re-created paper tags in ten groups, each group representing all the internees at a specific camp. Each of these groupings hangs from the gallery ceiling and is about 11 feet tall. Maruyama has folded the Tag Project into a parallel project of hers titled Executive Order 9066 to show them together in this exhibition.

Executive Order 9066 was the directive signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordering the incarceration of all people of Japanese ancestry then resident in the United States. For the parallel project, Maruyama created work that explores ethnicity and identity through suitcases, footlockers and steamer trunks, artifacts from their owners’ forced relocation journey in 1942.

The exhibits were organized by The Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston.

The Arts Center has collaborated with the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and the Arkansas Center for History and Culture to organize Relics of Rohwer: Gaman and the Art of Perseverance, a related exhibition documenting the experiences and artwork of Japanese Americans at Rohwer, one of two internment camps located in Arkansas.The artwork is on loan from the Mabel Rose Jamison Vogel/Rosalie Santine Gould Collection, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System.

Friday Faces of February: Andrew Carnegie

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andrewcarnegieThis Friday’s face is a bronze plaque of Andrew Carnegie. It can be found in the first floor of the main building of the Central Arkansas Library System.

A Scottish immigrant to the US, he amassed a great wealth as an industrialist, chiefly in the steel industry.  He started funding libraries in the 1880s.  He set up the Carnegie Corporation and used that as one of his avenues for philanthropy, especially for the establishment of libraries.

There were several Carnegie Libraries built in Arkansas.  Little Rock’s first public library, which opened in 1910, was one of these libraries.  It was located at the southwest corner of 7th and Louisiana.

The original building was razed in 1964, but the four columns which were on the front facade now stand outside the current Main Library building at 100 Rock Street.

Ark Literary Fest Preview Event: Three on Three

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three on threeThree on Three, Arkansas Literary Festival’s fast-paced sneak peek at a trio of authors on the 2013 Festival roster, tips off at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 7, in the Main Library’s Darragh Center.

Arkansas authors Kevin Brockmeier (The Illumination), Nickole Brown (Sister), and Festival Chair Jay Jennings (Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany), offer insight into the work of authors Ben Fountain, Frank X. Walker, and Karen Russell.

If you like pro football, poetry, or the supernatural, or if you’re interested in social justice, the Iraq War, or alligators in the Everglades, Three on Three has you covered.

Fountain, Walker, and Russell will appear at the 2013 Festival, April 18-21, along with additional best-selling and emerging authors from across the country.

The tenth annual Arkansas Literary Festival, the premier gathering of readers and writers in Arkansas, will include more than 80 presenters in locations on both sides of the river from April 18-21, 2013. The Central Arkansas Library System’s Main Library campus and other venues in the River Market and Argenta Arts districts are the sites for a stimulating mix of sessions, panels, special events, performances, workshops, presentations, opportunities to meet authors, book sales, and book signings. Most events are free and open to the public.

Plans Announced for 2013 Literary Festival

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lit fest logoLast week, the tenth annual Arkansas Literary Festival announced the plans for this year’s festival.

The premier gathering of readers and writers in Arkansas will include more than 80 presenters in locations on both sides of the river from April 18-21, 2013. The Main Library campus and other venues in the River Market and Argenta Arts districts are the sites for a stimulating mix of sessions, panels, special events, performances, workshops,presentations, opportunities to meet authors, book sales, and book signings. Most events are free and open to the public.

Festival authors include Richard Ford, Sylvia Day, Ben Fountain, Karen Russell, Ayana Mathis, Domingo Martinez, Da Chen, CD Wright, Pat Mora, Charles Todd, and more.

This year’s Festival authors have won an impressive number and variety of distinguished awards, such as the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, James Beard Foundation Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Newbery Honor, National Book Critics Circle Award, a Coretta Scott King Honor, PEN/O.Henry Prize; Pushcart Prize; Barnes and Noble Discover Prize for Fiction, Roger Ebert’s Film Festival Thumbs Up Award, Pure Belpré Award, International Griffin Prize for Poetry, International Documentary Association Best Documentary Short, Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators, and several National Book Award Finalists. Many of the presenters’ works have been translated into multiple languages and made into films.

Special events for adults during the Festival include a cocktail reception with the authors, food, wine, and spirits workshops, films, a play, and Spoken Word LIVE!, a city-wide poetry competition. Panels and workshops will feature topics such as fiction, memoir, screenwriting, super hero psychology & law, Warrior Writers Project, erotica, and more.

Children’s special events include a storytime on the lawn of the Governor’s Mansion, a book fiesta, the artmobile, plays, outdoor activities, and Super Hero Activity Afternoon. Festival sessions for children will take place at both the new Children’s Library, 4800 10th Street, and the Youth Services Department at the Main Library, 100 Rock Street.

Level 4, the Main Library’s teen center teens can meet authors and illustrators, participate in ComiCALS, activities and panels such as a cosplay contest, video game tournament, a writing workshop, and zombie survival activities.

Through the Writers In The Schools (WITS) initiative, the Festival will provide presentations by several authors for Pulaski county elementary, middle, and senior high schools and area colleges.

Support for the Literary Festival is provided by sponsors including Central Arkansas Library System; Friends of Central Arkansas Libraries (FOCAL); Department of Arkansas Heritage; Little Rock Convention & Visitors Bureau; Fred K. Darragh Jr. Foundation; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Mosaic Templars Cultural Center; Regions; ProSmartPrinting; MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History; Historic Arkansas Museum; Clinton Presidential Center; Hendrix-Murphy Foundation; Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLP, Arkansas Times; Christ Church, Little Rock’s Downtown Episcopal Church; Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center; Arkansas Library Association; Henderson State College; University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service; Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre; Arkansas Governor’s Mansion; Hendrix College Creative Writing and the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature & Language; Hendrix College Project Pericles Program; Hendrix College; University of Arkansas at Little Rock, English Department; University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Department of Rhetoric and Writing; Pulaski Technical College; Jewish Federation of Arkansas; Arkansas Arts Center; Power 92 Jams; Central High School National Historic Site; National Park Service; Literacy Action of Central Arkansas; Capital Hotel; Little Rock Film Festival; and LuLav. The Arkansas Literary Festival is supported in part by funds from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Author! Author!, a cocktail reception with the authors, will be Friday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m.; tickets are $25 in advance, and $40 at the door.

CALS Celebrates: New Year, New Reads

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 The Central Arkansas Library System is encouraging patrons to “Read in” the new year with the  winter reading program: New Year, New Reads.

From Monday, January 7 through Saturday, March 2, patrons may read any book they choose and the submit reviews one of three ways:

  1. at the branch
  2. via email to NewYearNewReads@cals.org
  3. tweet @calibrarysystem using the hashtag #NewYearNewReads.

Each branch will display the reviews submitted at their branch, and most branches will have drawings for door prizes from the reviews received. Each branch will determine the rules and prizes for their contest.

A prize of a Kindle Fire will be awarded for the Most Creative Book Review of all entries submitted online. Reviewers tweeting or emailing reviews of no more than 144 characters will be entered into the contest.

Readers can pick up reading suggestion bookmarks and review cards at the circulation desk of any CALS branch. The program is free and open to the public.