The Prelinger Library is a privately funded public library in San Francisco founded in 2004 and operated by Megan Prelinger and Rick Prelinger[1][2] It holds over 50,000 books, periodicals and pieces of print ephemera.[2] Prelinger Library considers itself a "hybrid library"[2] that blurs the distinction between digital and non-digital; as of 2009 it had over 3,700 e-books online.[2]
The library is usually open one and one-half days a week, and hosts approximately 1,000 visitors per year.
Collection
Interior of Prelinger Library, showing the artwork "Patriot Act" by Vanessa Renwick, the neon “Free / Speech / Fear / Free” sign that hangs above the door
The library is unusual in that it uses a custom system of organization designed by Megan that intends to facilitate and emphasize browsing. For example, the section on "Suburbia" is next to the section on "Domestic Environments", then "Architecture", which becomes "Graphic Design", which in turn leads to "Typography" and "Fine Arts", and then "Advertising" and "Sales". There is no Dewey Decimal Classification system or card catalog.
The library was inspired in part by the Warburg Institute Library in London, founded by German art historian Aby Warburg.[3] His disciple Fritz Saxl wrote: "The overriding idea was that the books together—each containing its larger or smaller bit of information and being supplemented by its neighbors—should by their titles guide the student to perceive the essential forces of the human mind and its history." Warburg built his library to find connections and relationships between antiquity and the Renaissance. Likewise, the Prelingers' library in part addresses the relationships among intellectual property, the evolution of media and cultural production.
Prelinger is a "serendipity" library,[2] a library that emphasizes the experience of browsing and discovering things that were formerly unknown.[2] The library can also be seen as a counterbalance to modern public libraries, which, as part of digital-library initiatives, emphasize computers and databases and are no longer a "mere warehouse for books".[3] Megan Prelinger said the library is "a local workshop, not an institution. We serve tea, and we encourage photography and scanning and any other form of non-destructive appropriation. That kind of environment is very natural to people in the millennial generation and people who have grown up during the resurgence of craft and DIY spaces."[4]
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. As of May 7, 2022, the Internet Archive holds over 35 million books and texts, 7.9 million movies, videos and TV shows, 842 thousand software programs, 14 million audio files, 4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 237 thousand concerts, and over 682 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a major library and cultural center on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. It is a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria, once one of the largest libraries worldwide, which was lost in antiquity. The idea of reviving the old library dates back to 1974, when a committee set up by Alexandria University selected a plot of land for its new library. Construction work began in 1995 and, after some US$220 million had been spent, the complex was officially inaugurated on 16 October 2002. In 2010, the library received a donation of 500,000 books from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). The gift makes the Bibliotheca Alexandrina the sixth-largest Francophone library in the world.
The Mozilla Foundation is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls Mozilla trademarks and copyrights. It owns a taxable subsidiary: the Mozilla Corporation, which employs many Mozilla developers and coordinates releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird email client. The Mozilla Foundation was founded by the Netscape-affiliated Mozilla Organization. The organization is currently based in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, California, United States.
A digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier or handle used to uniquely identify various objects, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). DOIs are an implementation of the Handle System. They are widely used to identify academic, professional, and government information, such as journal articles, research reports, data sets, and official publications. DOIs have also been used to identify other types of information resources, such as commercial videos.
An application program is a computer program designed to carry out a specific task other than one relating to the operation of the computer itself, typically to be used by end-users. Word processors, media players, and accounting software are examples of. The collective noun refers to all applications collectively. The other principal classifications of software are system software, relating to the operation of the computer, and utility software ("utilities").
Library and Archives Canada is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. It is the fifth largest library in the world.
The Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life, and social history. It was in New York City from 1982 to 2002 and is now in San Francisco.
Rick Prelinger is an archivist, professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, writer and filmmaker, and founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002 after 20 years' operation.
Digital reference is a service by which a library reference service is conducted online, and the reference transaction is a computer-mediated communication. It is the remote, computer-mediated delivery of reference information provided by library professionals to users who cannot access or do not want face-to-face communication. Virtual reference service is most often an extension of a library's existing reference service program. The word "reference" in this context refers to the task of providing assistance to library users in finding information, answering questions, and otherwise fulfilling users’ information needs. Reference work often but not always involves using reference works, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. This form of reference work expands reference services from the physical reference desk to a "virtual" reference desk where the patron could be writing from home, work or a variety of other locations.
The University of San Francisco School of Law is the law school of the private University of San Francisco. Established in 1912, it received American Bar Association accreditation in 1935 and joined the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in 1937.
The Wave Organ is a sculpture located in San Francisco, California. It was constructed on the shore of San Francisco Bay in May 1986 by the Exploratorium, and more specifically, by installation artist and the Exploratorium artist-in-residence Peter Richards, who conceived and designed the organ, working with stonemason George Gonzales.
Transliteracy is "a fluidity of movement across a range of technologies, media and contexts". It is an ability to use diverse techniques to collaborate across different social groups.
Sports Byline USA is an international sports radio network based in the United States. Sports Byline USA is also the name of the flagship program on the network. It was the first national sports talk show and was launched on October 24, 1988. Sports Byline USA is located in San Francisco, California. Nationally, the network claims programming is heard on 200 satellite radio stations, was on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 122, and on CRN Digital Talk Radio Networks channel 2. The station is also available on several international stations and is the main sports programming of the American Forces Network which broadcasts on 500 radio stations in 177 countries. Sports Byline USA is no longer on Sirius XM 122 which is now CNBC, but its sister program, Sports Overnight America is on Sirius XM 203.
A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital media formats or a library accessible through the internet. Objects can consist of digitized content like print or photographs, as well as originally produced digital content like word processor files or social media posts. In addition to storing content, digital libraries provide means for organizing, searching, and retrieving the content contained in the collection. Digital libraries can vary immensely in size and scope, and can be maintained by individuals or organizations. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks. These information retrieval systems are able to exchange information with each other through interoperability and sustainability.
The Free Music Archive or FMA is an online repository of royalty-free music. Established in 2009 by the East Orange, New Jersey community radio station WFMU and in cooperation with fellow stations KBOO and KEXP, it aims to provide music under Creative Commons licenses that can be freely downloaded and used in other works. The service launched with an emphasis on curating high-quality works in a manner "designed for the age of the internet". Users can also "tip" musicians via donations.
The CK-12 Foundation is a California-based non-profit organization which aims to increase access to low-cost K-12 education in the United States and abroad. CK-12 provides free and customizable K-12 open educational resources aligned to state curriculum standards. As of 2022, the foundation's tools were used by over 200,000,000 students worldwide.
The University of North Texas Libraries is an American academic research library system that serves the constituent colleges and schools of University of North Texas in Denton. The phrase "University of North Texas Libraries" encompasses three aspects: The library collections as a whole and its organizational structure; The physical facilities and digital platform that house the collections; and certain self-contained collections of substantial size that warrant the name "Library"—the Music Library and the Digital Libraries (collections), for example, are housed in Willis Library.
Oyster was a commercial streaming service for digital e-books, available for Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, and NOOK HD/HD+ devices. It was also available on any web browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Oyster held over 1 million books in its library, and as of September 2015, the service was only available in the United States.
Megan Prelinger is a cultural historian and archivist. She is the co-founder of the Prelinger Library in San Francisco and author of two books: Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957–1962 and Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age.
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