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presses, and each has developed a readership in the region. These books include Tom Buchanan’s Fishes of Arkansas (UA Press, 2010), Science and Technology in 19th Century America (Greenwood Press, 2006) by Todd Timmons, The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West (University of Missouri Press, 2012) by Robert J. Willoughby, A Rough Introduction to This Sunny Land: The Civil War Diary of Private Henry A. Strong, Co. K, Twelfth Kansas Infantry, edited by Tom Wing (Butler Center Books, 2006), and Billy Higgins’ The Barling Darling: Hal Smith in American Baseball (Butler Center Books, 2009). English professor Cammie Sublette, a humanities scholar, was involved in the planning of an Arkansas Humanities Council-funded program to preserve traditions, oral histories, and choral music of the African-American churches of this area. Some of this rich primary source material will be preserved in the Pebley Center of the Boreham Library. Two sisters, Rosa Belle and Olive Pebley, and their mother, Kathleen, bequeathed an endowment to be used for preserving and extending historical scholarship of the UAFS region. Today, the Pebley Center houses collections, historic maps and photographs, books, journals, oral history interviews, microfilmed military records, and microfilmed newspapers. These materials provide significant primary source materials for regional research and for students of history at the University. Wilma Cunningham, director of the Boreham Library from 1998 until her retirement in 2011, started the process of switching the library from its previous mission of supporting two-year education—a mission that it fulfilled with distinction—to modernizing facilities, outlook, and databases commensurate with a regional university. This work will continue under the leadership of the current director, Robert Frizzell. The library went through a construction process in 2011–12, greatly increasing its size. To go along with the expanded structure, the library has an experienced and knowledgeable staff with Dennis Van Arsdale, Patti Haberer, Elizabeth Burden, and Dianne Werthmuller, who serve students and faculty by meeting their every academic need. Inter-library loans are handled by Sharon Freeman. Research librarians are always on hand to assist students in their writing, research, and reading assignments. Master librarian Carolyn Filippelli, among her many contributions to the University, its faculty, its students, and the library, organized the work and commitments necessary to digitize The Journal of the Fort Smith Historical Society and make
Students Kristine Stewart, Emily Peevy, and Annie Staton stand before their poster display at the 2010 Undergraduate Research Symposium.
Students Anngelica Parent and Kristine Dickson stand by their exhibit at the Undergraduate Research Symposium in April 2011.
Medical arts students prepare for their Undergraduate Research Symposium presentation in 2010.
it available online to all readers. This illustrates the proactive library programs that seek to provide Internet access to previously hard-to-reach local documents and materials. The History department co-sponsored academic conferences on 19th century history in 2011 and 2012 in conjunction with the Clayton House, the Fort Smith Historical Society, the Arkansas Humanities Council, and the Historytellers organi-