PORTER NAMED EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF CENTER FOR ARKANSAS HISTORY AND CULTURE

Dr. Deborah Baldwin, associate provost of collections and archives, and now former executive director of UA Little Rock’s Center for Arkansas History and Culture has now become interim dean of the College of Business, Health, and Human Services.

As a result, someone new needs to fill her position, and Dr. Jess Porter, associate professor of Geography at UA Little Rock has taken over as executive director of the center.

I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Porter recently. He is a fascinating individual, and quite smart to boot.

Over the course of the interview and the tour of the facility he gave me, I learned quite a lot about what he does at the facility, and about him as a person. His friendliness and competence both struck me immediately.

He’s the type to have fun tackling difficult projects. When I asked what his favorite part of the job is, he told me that “You have all kinds of interesting challenges and opportunities that show up every single day” and compared his work at the Center to his former position as chair of the history department, which he says was much more routine than what he now does.

Like his new duties, Dr. Porter is quite multifaceted. He started out his undergraduate degree as a double major in French and International Business at the University of Colorado before transitioning to Geography after taking a class in the subject. It was his first time encountering Geography as an academic subject, and it really sparked his interest in it.

He’s particularly interested in the geospatial technology area of the field, though he hasn’t worked as much with that recently.

What Dr. Porter enjoys most of the Center’s mission is distilling the records they get in order to preserve Arkansas’s history and culture. As the premier archive in the state, they get a lot of donated records from politicians.

They’re currently processing the records of former Representative Vic Snyder, and they have an agreement with current Representative French Hill to take his papers when his term comes to an end. It’s not just the records of politicians that they get though.

They might also get business records, or old family photos, really anything that’s part of the historical record of Arkansas.

And they get a frankly astounding volume of donations. Vic Snyder’s collection is composed of 800 boxes.

Not all donations are anywhere near as large as that of course. Some are as small as 1 box, but with the number of donations that come in, the archive is constantly growing and processing new material.

They got 50 donations in 2022 and so far in 2023, they’ve received 20 donations.

The collection is already massive too, with the digital archive currently approaching 40 terabytes worth of records.

The breadth of techniques necessary for the proper preservation of the physical data the Center receives is astounding as well.

Some of the techniques are common sense procedures, like storing the papers away from sunlight and in climate-controlled areas, but others are less obvious, like the need to freeze or bake some collections in order to ensure any bugs or other vermin in the collection don’t make it into the archives.

Like Dr. Porter’s education history, work at the Center is multifaceted. And nothing sums that up better than the fact that two of the other workers at the center were looking at legos when I arrived.

Admittedly, this was only tangentially work-related, but it still contributed to an overall sense of a fun and fluid workspace.

And like his workspace, Dr. Porter is a fun and fascinating individual. It was a joy to talk to him and the Center is clearly in capable hands.

BY SABLE HAWKINS