Meet our 2024 Keynote Speakers
David Ware
Arkansas State Historian
David Ware has served as state historian and director of the Arkansas State Archives since January 2021. Before this, he spent over 18 years as historian of the Arkansas State Capitol. He is a native of Washington DC, grew up in Nebraska and earned his Ph.D. in American history from Arizona State University. His career has included both academic and public history, as well as busking, carpentry and an extended stretch in the oil patch. He lives in Little Rock with his librarian-turned-archivist-turned-librarian wife and their elderly Airedales in a small house filled with model trains, musical instruments, old cameras, even older clocks and many books.
Katie Adkins
Arkansas State Archives
Katie Adkins is project director for the Arkansas Digital Newspaper Project (ADNP) at the Arkansas State Archives (ASA). Working with the Library of Congress, she digitizes historic Arkansas newspapers as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program. She works closely with a team of archivists, microfilm technicians, and historians at ASA in the digitization and promotion of the ADNP project. Through presentations, articles, and interviews, she is able to advocate the importance of this free resource to researchers, teachers, librarians, and the general public across Arkansas.
Katie joined the Arkansas Digital Newspaper Project in 2020 and has managed the digitization of over 200,000 pages of content for Chronicling America, with an additional 100,000 pages currently underway. To learn more about the work of ADNP, visit Chronicling America Digitized Newspapers (arkansasheritage.com).
