Professor Robert Allen and UNC Library Honored for Innovation in Digital History

Check out the announcement about Professor Robert Allen and UNC Library’s recent award: the Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History, given by the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Allen, Library honored for innovation in digital history

Professor Allen and the Library received the award for “Going to the Show,” a searchable digital archive, which brings together thousands of artifacts about movie theaters in the state –photographs, newspaper ads and articles, city maps and directories, old postcards and architectural drawings – to document and illuminate the way movie-going became one of the most important social practices of the early 20th century. It also highlights the ways that race conditioned the experience of movie-going for all North Carolinians.

The digital project features material from around the state, but many of the original items that were used, including newspaper clippings, postcards, city directories, and Sanborn maps, come from the North Carolina Collection.

Paperweight survived (too bad bank didn’t)

This mirror-paperweight (3 1/2 inches diameter) shows off the elegant Citizens National Bank building mentioned by Catherine Bishir.

The swastikas, though jarring now, were a common symbol of good luck before being hijacked by the Nazis in 1932.