The $5,874 grant, entitled 鈥淭ie-ing Arkansas Together,鈥� will process and digitize 133 oversized railway maps associated with the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern Railroad and the Missouri Pacific Railroad. The rail line associated with this project traveled from MoArk, Arkansas, to Texarkana, Arkansas.

These maps show a unique history of Arkansas towns and businesses in the early 20th century, since they document the location of buildings and other constructed elements as well as railway lines.

This project is associated with a larger endeavor to preserve and showcase material on the railroads鈥� influence on Arkansas settlement patterns and their influence on culture and society. The center鈥檚 goal is to provide resources to educate the public on the importance of political decisions related to city development.

鈥淯nderstanding the development of the railroad provides a deeper understanding of how people lived and interacted through the structures they built,鈥� the grant states.

Once completed, the digitized maps will be available on the center鈥檚 online catalog for the general public to view.

This project is supported in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The post Center wins grant to process and digitize Arkansas railroad and city maps appeared first on Center for Arkansas History and Culture.

Bost joined the Center’s archival staff in 2014 after graduating from the University of North Carolina with a Master鈥檚 of Science in Library Science (MSLS) with a concentration in Archives and Records Management.

鈥淧rimary sources help students realize that history isn’t written by some magical, omnipotent power. Instead, our understanding of history comes from letters, emails, diaries, photographs, or meeting minutes created by someone like your or me,鈥� states Bost. 鈥淥ur knowledge of the past is only as good as the sources that survive to tell us about it.鈥�

Having always had an interest in preserving sources of information since she was a child, Bost was drawn to archives because they allow the user to look at history on a more personal or individual level.

鈥淚 love seeing [students] have that ‘aha moment’ and gain new insight into the past,鈥� says Bost. 鈥淚t鈥檚 exciting to see what they come up with after deeply engaging with the archival material.鈥�

To date, Bost has worked with faculty in the Departments of History, Sociology and Anthropology, and Theatre to arrange instruction sessions on accessing and using primary sources in undergraduate coursework. For more information, contact the Center at cahc@ualr.edu.

The post Instruction sessions connect students to historical resources appeared first on Center for Arkansas History and Culture.

The public will be able to access these digitized blueprints through the Center鈥檚 .

The architectural drawing collection, includes churches, schools, businesses, and residences, dating from the early 1900s to the 1940s. This project focused on digitizing the most fragile drawings from the collection, specifically non-residential buildings, pre-1929, and was supported in part by a grant from the  and the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

The post Hundreds of historic blueprints now available online appeared first on Center for Arkansas History and Culture.