CALS Blogs

On Thursday, July 27, a group of patrons gathered in the community room at Dee Brown Library to celebrate. While most people spend their summers avoiding the heat and relaxing, this group was working on building their language skills. The language acquisition program at Dee Brown offered two options- English as a second language and Spanish as a second language.

The Witherspoon Arts & Cultural Gala and Award Ceremony is hosted by the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library. It recognizes artists and purveyors of the arts for their accomplishments and contributions to the arts, literary arts and cultural community. The award recognizes the achievements of high excellence and accomplishments.

Latina Sheard was awarded the The Witherspoon Librarian of the Year Award –

On Thursday, May 30, the air was electric in the historic Cox Building, the home of the Rock It! Lab; not just from the lively tunes being played by DJ Swift 720, nor the food from Afrobites (although it was delicious), but from the excitement of listening to five soon-to-graduate individuals taking part in the pitch competition.

April 21-27 is Volunteer Appreciation Week and CALS wants to express a huge THANK YOU to our wonderful volunteers. Close to 800 volunteers donate their time to the library regularly throughout the year. We currently have 1,296 volunteers on file at CALS. This past year, we had 668 volunteers donate 12,697.25 hours, for a cost savings of $403,772.55 to the library system.

April 1, 2024

So much progress has been made at Williams Library recently! So much so that it’s almost time to reopen. Check out the progress photos below. The bright orange crosswalk has been painted and leads from Dunbar Middle School to the new entrance. Bright colors are splashed across the walls, creating a fun and inviting space.

On Tuesday, February 6, CALS held a “Wall Breaking” ceremony to kick off the interior demolition of the library. It included a huge turnout of patrons, CALS staff, and members from CDI Contractors as well as the architects from Polk Stanley Wilcox. After a bit of conversation, we discovered how ecstatic they were to be working on the Library,

October 7, 2025 – Main Library Grand Reopening

What an incredible weekend at the Central Arkansas Library System! On Saturday, October 4, we officially and ceremoniously reopened the doors to our newly reimagined Main Library. It was a celebration unlike any we have had at CALS.

CALS patrons now have digital access to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Historical Archive! Many of you know that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was split into two newspapers until they merged in 1991. This collection contains searchable, image edition issues of the Arkansas Gazette, Arkansas Democrat, and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. This collection is available remotely so patrons can access this outside our libraries;