In the forty-two years that the Arkansas Field Office of the Nature Conservancy has operated, staff and volunteers have combined their efforts to conserve hundreds of thousands of acres of natural habitat in the state. This protected land includes forests, prairies, rivers, streams, and wetlands. Conservancy efforts have created and preserved national wildlife refuges, wildlife management areas,

So the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas is now eighteen years old, having celebrated its birthday last week. I am told by my associate editor that I should write a celebratory piece, but all I can remember from my eighteenth birthday is registering for Selective Service at the post office and then going to the Craighead County Courthouse to register to vote.

To make our rich book and periodicals collection more accessible to researchers, the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Roberts Library has been working to digitize books from our collections not bound by copyright to make them accessible via the web. 

Items are scanned by our staff and then uploaded to our digital collections on the Arkansas Studies Research Portal at www.arstudies.com where users can use keyword searches to find information that may be relevant to their research.