News & Announcements

The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) has purchased new telescopes for the CALS Telescope Program with funds from an Arkansas Space Grant Consortium grant and the assistance of our partner for this program, the Central Arkansas Astronomical Society (CAAS). There are now 30 telescopes available for CALS patrons to borrow. Thanks to the partnership with CAAS, patrons will also have opportunities in January to learn about astronomy and the telescope program.d The telescopes are 4.5” Orion StarBlast Newtonian instruments and will gather several hundred times more light than the unaided eye and magnify up to 56 times.  These small, portable scopes are particularly suited to observing the moon and the brighter planets, such as Saturn, Jupiter, and under proper conditions …

The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) has added a new book to its publishing catalog. OUTSPOKEN: The Olly Neal Story is the autobiography of civil rights activist Olly Neal Jr., Arkansas’s first black district prosecuting attorney. OUTSPOKEN was published by Butler Center Books, the nonprofit publishing project of the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, and is available for purchase at stores and online retailers. Born in 1941 in rural eastern Arkansas, Neal started and led the Lee County Cooperative Clinic in Marianna during the 1970s. He went on to become the first black district prosecuting attorney in Arkansas and served as a circuit court judge and on the Arkansas Court of Appeals. Historian Grif Stockley has characterized Neal as …