Research Trip: Prelinger Library
The Prelinger Library has a mission “to foster discovery and serendipity in a browsing-friendly environment; to demonstrate that unforeseen benefits arise from the synthesis between analog and digital cultures; to experiment with new forms of access to information, and to convene community around a collection.”
The library is located at 301 8th St. Room 215 in San Francisco. The digital books collection is hosted by the Internet Archive at www.archive.org/details/prelinger_library
This private collection open to the public gets about 1000 visitors per year. Everyone is encouraged to bring a camera, or to use their scanner, because it’s not allowed to remove books from the library.
“Is the library a nonprofit? The library is a free offering, an installation, a workshop, and an extension of our living room. It is not incorporated officially in any way. Its annual budget is $24000.”
Unlike traditional libraries, there is no card catalog system. Instead, random browsing is encouraged. The books are arranged in such a way that they flow together as topics overlap. For example, Row One begins with San Francisco, working toward California, Western U.S., Central U.S., Eastern U.S., geography, cartography, natural history, the four elements, agriculture, rural studies, landscape and land use, extractive resource industries. Then Row Two begins with manufacturing, industry, history of technology, how to DIY, transportation, roads, camping, car culture, trains, planes, bicycles, railroads, electrical infrastructure, plumbing, regional planning, urban studies, parks and gardens ETC. This approach is similar to the Warburg Institute in London, whose human history collection is categorized by Action, Orientation, Word and Image.
Uniquely, visitors are asked to obey 2 rules. The first rule helps to ensure the conservation of books. You are asked to remove books from the shelves using the middle of the spine, not pulling them from the top of the spine as that “is where books break down.”
Rule 2 is to ask permission from a host to open the gray boxes, because they contain delicate ephemera.
ephemera - items of collectible memorabilia, typically written or printed, that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity
Interestingly, some books also contain ephemera. This book about big forest trees contained a few old newspaper clippings that were also related to logging and cutting down big trees. “If it’s not damaging to the book, we usually leave it in.”
This approach that makes Prelinger unique. Their collection, around 40000 books, is “mostly historical”, but they’re “not a white glove kind of place.” I overheard Rick say to a guy browsing a gray box of ephemera “thank you for folding them back so carefully. It adds to the longevity.”
“Where did the books come from? They were collected from used bookstores, new bookstores, junk stores, private book dealers, library discards and library duplicate exchange lists; also from donations offered to us by library visitors and other generous like-minded people.”
“Ephemera Annex: The ephemera collection holds delicate and unique soft-format printed materials housed in gray archival boxes. Subjects correspond to the shelf topics. The heart of the library; organized alphabetically by subject.”
“How are the books chosen? This is our personal collection based on our research interests. It is also designed to support the projects of others; to stimulate discovery of the unexpected, and to work as a visual history and history of ideas of the 20th century. Each acquisition must make a direct contribution to this goal. We are very selective.”
The Prelinger Library donated over 3000 books to the Internet Archive for scanning. They primarily chose books that were unique and interesting, but also books that weren’t yet digitized. There are many copyright issues that come up in this kind of process, which is a shame, but it’s kind of historic.
A not-so-long-time-ago, a lot of books were burned by dictators trying to manipulate history.
Some of the books on the shelves contain bookmarks. There are 3 types of bookmarks. “S” bookmarks and bookmarks with a URL indicate that the book has been scanned and is freely downloadable. “copyright” bookmarks indicate that the book is copyrighted and ineligible for digitization.
For example, this book can be found online through the Prelinger Collection at the Internet Archive.
The book can be viewed online, downloaded as a PDF, or downloaded in a number of different files (for the amazon kindle, for example).
The Prelinger Library is an offshoot of the Prelinger Archives, which is a film archive. So there were some boxes of film and stuff on the floor.
“Does the library still take in new material, or is it full? The library project is never static. Like a long-cooking pot of stew, it continuously takes in new ingredients while also reducing down, becoming richer and more concentrated with time.”
I asked Rick about the future of the library. Their space now is full, but not cluttered. He said they think in terms of their lease, which is 5 years. Before the books were made available to the public, many of them were just in storage. This seems to be a very common issue with so many books, because they’re heavy and cumbersome, taking up a lot of room. He mentioned that having the library was cheaper than keeping them in storage.
I was interested in how they managed to move so many books, some all the way from New York. Before the books were stacked on the shelves, they were just in unmarked cardboard boxes. Then the boxes found their way to the new space, so one side of the room was completely full, ceiling to wall, 15 feet deep, with boxes of books.
The books and ephemera that don’t make it into the collection, or are moving out of the collection, extra acquisitions or donations, are available for free on their book cart.
Overall the Prelinger Library creates an environment that is welcoming and comforting, a little bit like entering someone’s home. I felt priviliged to be browsing this collection, and I’ve never really felt priviliged to be in a library before. Most libraries have a very academic feeling to them, or they have the standard-public-library kind of feeling that doesn’t necessarily command much respect because it’s so generic by now.
The Prelinger Library is interesting because it is a private collection of books, and the owners of the books are right there, welcoming you to the library, introducing you to their books. Their efforts to digitize the collection aren’t unique, but their lack of a cataloging system is not that common.
Traditional libraries are query based. That is, you can search them with a computer, entering keywords into a text box, pressing ENTER and getting a few pages of results. The Prelinger hasn’t made an effort to catalog their books, mainly because there’s something wonderful about just wandering aimlessly through the bookshelves and discovering things by chance, making those serendipitous connections, experiencing the library as a whole, rather than just finding a single book among the many.
There is some opportunity then, in changing the way that books are made available online. Right now it is still very similar to the standard query-based experience. Next I’ll explore this angle and find some more alternatives.
Other independent libraries and reference resources to be aware of:
Reanimation Library (Brooklyn)
Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research (Los Angeles)
Independent Press Resource Center (Portland)
Provisions Library (Washington, D.C.)
Radical Reference (online only)
