The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) Encyclopedia of Arkansas is a web-based encyclopedia of the U.S. state of Arkansas, described by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as "a free, authoritative source of information about the history, politics, geography, and culture of the state of Arkansas." The encyclopedia is a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Little Rock-based CALS. CALS has pledged to keep the encyclopedia in operation in perpetuity. The project was officially launched in 2006 with 700 entries and 900 multimedia items. By June 2014, it had grown to more than 3,600 entries and 5,000 multimedia items; as of 2021, the site had more than 6,500 entries and 10,500 pieces of media. The website was redesigned in 2019 to add functions and support for mobile devices. The project has a staff of five; articles are written by volunteer contributors who receive a payment of 5 cents per word. Tom W. Dillard was the Founding Editor; as of 2018 the editor is Guy Lancaster, who was one of the first interns. The project is financially supported by the NEH; the Department of Arkansas Heritage, Arkansas General Assembly, and Arkansas Humanities Council; and by various foundations, principally the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. More information...
According to PR-model, encyclopediaofarkansas.net is ranked 3,744th in multilingual Wikipedia, in particular this website is ranked 2,124th in English Wikipedia.
The website is placed before democracynow.org and after laprovence.com in the BestRef global ranking of the most important sources of Wikipedia.
