Search the University of Arkansas Special Collections Finding Aids
Our collections include personal, professional, and family papers; business and organizational records, including the University Archives; and other unique, typically unpublished historical documents in a variety of formats, from scrapbooks to correspondence to digital media. They offer primary sources for research, exploration, and discovery on a variety of topics, many of which relate to Arkansas and the Ozarks region. Each collection is most commonly described by a finding aid, a guide to a collection and its contents; you can search our finding aids using the search box below, or browse by collection name, subject (such as a topic or a place name), or name (of a person, family, or organization) by clicking on the links above. Materials can be requested by using the "Request" button present at box-, folder-, or item-level descriptions; this button will take you to your Special Collections account. Contact Research Services (specoll@uark.edu) if you have questions about any collection.
Access: In some cases, the collections may be stored off-site, so please request materials at least two weeks in advance of your visit.
Contact: Email specoll@uark.edu with any questions, or if you can't find what you're looking for.
Search Tips:
- To search an exact phrase, use double quotes (such as "Fayetteville, Arkansas" or "University of Arkansas").
- Searches are not case sensitive.
- To exclude a term from your search, put a minus sign in front of it. (For example, the search "Bumpers" -college will find materials with the name "Bumpers" but without the word "college.")
- You can create advanced searches by clicking the + button to add a new line to your search.
- Use the linked text in the navigation bar to browse collections, names (people, families, and organizations), and subjects (topics and geographical place names).
Our Commitment to Inclusive Description
In creating new finding aids—the guides archivists create to describe the records in our care—it is our goal to use inclusive and respectful language, and to contextualize potentially outdated or harmful language where it is retained (for instance, in titles that are derived from a creator's original file titles, or in proper names). In Special Collections, we continually work to revise and update archival description, but as this is an iterative and imperfect process, we also welcome your help and invite researchers and other users to notify us as they encounter language in finding aids that should be reviewed by staff for potential updates. Please email us at specoll@uark.edu with any suggestions or concerns.
What does this look like in practice?
- We revise and update descriptions when they contain harmful language written by archivists. We note these updates in finding aid revision notes for transparency.
- We retain (but contextualize) descriptions, even when they contain harmful language, when they are derived from the records themselves.
- We review and consider revising language and potential issues that are reported.