UNC News Service

CHAPEL HILL -- About 2,000 postcards from World War I will make their Internet debut today on the Web site of the UNC Chapel Hill Library.

The site is http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/graypc/, and the availability was timed with the observation of Veterans Day today.

The postcards are the first of nearly 6,400 that the library plans to digitize by June 2010.

They are drawn from the Bowman Gray Collection of World Wars I and II in the Rare Book Collection of the Wilson Special Collections Library. The Bowman Gray Collection features 16,000 graphic images from the wars including prints, postcards and posters.

World War I was the golden age of postcards, said Libby Chenault, interim curator of the Rare Book Collection.

"This was one of the last major world-historical events before the advent of mass media," said Chenault. Postcards were used to depict new military technology such as tanks and airplanes; to record scenes of mass devastation; and to distribute propaganda messages.

The digitized postcard collection, when completed, will be the largest such presentation on the Web.

Bowman Gray attended UNC in the 1890s. The native of what was then Winston, N.C., went on to become president and chairman of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and was a major benefactor to both UNC and Wake Forest University.

In another Veterans Day development, UNC announced its annual Veteran's Day ceremony will have a change of venue because of the forecast for rain.

The free public ceremony will be at 11 a.m. today in the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building at 325 Pittsboro St., near McCauley Street and across from the State Employees' Credit Union.

For more information, visit http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/3071/107/.