Lens into Mid-20th Century America

FAIN: PW-50540-10

University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)
Kara M McClurken (Project Director: July 2009 to August 2012)

The digitization of 12,480 film clips and 20,000 pages of broadcast scripts of local news coverage by WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, for the period 1951-71.

Local television news from the analog era provides an audiovisual lens into 20th century America, yet it has been often overlooked or discarded. The loss of this material, especially local news film covering the 1950s through the 1970s, has deprived historians, humanities scholars, educators, and students of a detailed record of mid-20th-century America. In an effort to provide these much-needed resources to the public, the University of Virginia Library seeks support from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the preservation, reformatting, and digitization of the WSLS-TV News Film Collection, 1951-1971.