The Virgil Q. Wacks Collection, held by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University, consists of 1,817 clips of motion picture film and four audiotape recordings. The film material documents the people, businesses, and towns of the Appalachian region and beyond, including western North Carolina, southeast Kentucky, east Tennessee, and southwest Virginia. The audio materials includes musical performances, interviews, and business advertisement spots. The collection provides a visual  and sonic documentation of almost half a century of Appalachian lifestyles, traditions, and customs. The majority of the films in this collection were shot in the 16mm gauge and aired on the “Virgil Q. Wacks Varieties” television program.

The current digital collection contains surrogates of all 1,817 film clips and all four of the audio recordings.