Special Collections Department Wins Two Awards of Merit from Arkansas Historical Association

The special collections department at the University of Arkansas was recently given two Awards of Merit from the Arkansas Historical Association at its annual convention in Little Rock. The association was high in its praise for Index Arkansas, an online index to Arkansas publications.

AHA President Laura Miller of Hope said her group wanted to "recognize Index Arkansas for its pioneering role in providing access to Arkansas literature." Index Arkansas, which totals more than 100,000 citations, indexes a vast array of literature about Arkansas or its people and is free and available to everyone at http://arkindex.uark.edu/. Recent expansion of Index Arkansas was made possible by a grant from the Happy Hollow Foundation of Fayetteville.

The second Award of Merit honors the Special Collections' digital project "Land of (Unequal) Opportunity: Documenting the Civil Rights Struggle in Arkansas," which is an online database featuring images and documents. The project not only addresses the civil rights of racial minorities, but also of ethnic minorities such as the Japanese Americans who were forcibly relocated to Arkansas during World War II. To assist teachers in using the digital documents and photographs in the classroom, five posters and 10 lesson plans are included. See more at "Land of (Unequal) Opportunity." The project was partly underwritten by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the Department of Arkansas Heritage.