Everyone, take your seats!: An EOA Slideshow

Since the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas turns 18 years old on May 2 this year (in just over a week!), it made sense to me that there ought to be some kind of high school-style presentation. So, what’s this presentation about? I’m so glad you asked! I figured it’d be fun and interesting to take a look at our stats regarding entry content.

When we categorize our EOA entries, the broadest categories we start with are: Event; Group; Person; Place; and Thing. A specific school is a Thing. The town where the school is located is a Place. The one in charge of the school is a Person; the fraternities on campus are Groups; and that thing that happened there that one time? That’s an Event.

So, here’s the breakdown for how much of the CALS EOA is made up of each category. We have over 1,100 Event entries making up 14.9% of our entries total; we have over 500 Group entries making up 7.1% of our entries; we have over 2,200 Person entries making up 30.7% of our entries; we have over 1,500 Place entries making up 20.5% of our entries; and we have over 2,000 Thing entries making up 26.9% of our entries.

 

If an entry is about a Person, we like to specify whether the entry is about a Man or a Woman (we haven’t had an entry on a nonbinary person yet—feel free to email me at jjobe@cals.org if you know of someone who is entry-worthy!). So how do the numbers look by gender? Well, 88.9% of our People and Group entries are about Men, while only 18.1% are about Women! Meanwhile, Census.gov/quickfacts says 50.6% of Arkansans are Women…

 

We also like to specify if a Person entry is about someone who is African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latin American, Native American, or white. When we look at the People and Group entries including white people, we can see that entries about white people make up about 70% of the entries. This compares to 78.5% of people living in Arkansas who are white. Entries about Black people make up 27% of our People and Group entries, whereas the percentage of Black people living in Arkansas is 15.6% of the state population. Our entries about Native Americans make up 2.4% of our People entries, whereas the Native American population living in the state makes up 1.1% of the population. Entries about Asian Americans are less than one percent, whereas those who live in Arkansas (Asian 1.8% plus Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders 0.5%) make up 2.3% of the state’s population. Our entries on Hispanic people and Latin Americans make up less than one percent of our People entries, whereas the Hispanic/Latino population of the state is 8.6%.

Looking only at entries about People or Groups that are/were not white, however, we see that most of those entries are about Black people at 88.9%, followed by Native Americans at 7.8%, Asian Americans at 2.2%, and Hispanic or Latin Americans at 1.1%.

Most of our entries can also be categorized with an era marker that indicates a time frame. Those time categories are: Pre-European Exploration (Prehistory–1540); European Exploration and Settlement (1541–1802); Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood (1803–1860); Civil War through Reconstruction (1861–1874); Post-Reconstruction through the Gilded Age (1875–1900); Early Twentieth Century (1901–1940); World War II through the Faubus Era (1941–1967); Divergent Prosperity and the Arc of Reform (1968–2022); and Modern Era (2023–Present). As you can see here, some eras generate more content than others. Up until recently, our Modern Era contained everything from 1968 through to the present day, but we decided to demarcate the eras into a new one (Divergent Prosperity and the Arc of Reform) and start a new Modern Era with 2023.

So how are we looking? Would you give us an A, or wait to see how we do in our next four years? With over 7,500 entries and over 16,000 pieces of media, we’re pretty proud of our accomplishments so far, but we never want to rest on our laurels! We’re always on the lookout for ways to update and upkeep our current entries; for ideas on how to improve the site overall; and for any subjects deserving of a new entry. We’re also interested in continuing to diversify and expand to become the most complete and inclusive resource we can be. If you’re interested in helping us do just that, shoot me or other staffers an email any time. And learn more about how to get involved with the EOA here.

By Jasmine Jobe, EOA editorial assistant and CALS Writing Circle programmer