The WSLS-TV News Film Collection, 1951-1971, comprises thousands of 16mm news film clips and related anchorperson scripts created by Roanoke, Va., television station WSLS during the mid-20th century. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities funded the preservation and digitization of this collection. Content of the news stories varies greatly from Massive Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement to soapbox derbies and beauty pageants. The WSLS-TV news film collection is now available to the public in digitized form through the Library's online catalog, Virgo. Each news story is searchable by both free-text keywords and controlled subject terms via Virgo; the collection record also offers date-based browsing. The online exhibit features a survey of the collection’s many subjects.
