- Prelinger Library
The Prelinger Library is a privately funded
public library inSan Francisco founded in 2004 and operated byRick Prelinger and his spouse Megan Shaw Prelinger.The library is unusual in that it uses a custom system of organization which is designed 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 system or card catalog.The library was inspired in part by the
Warburg Institute Library in London, founded by German art historianAby Warburg . His discipleFritz 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.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".
The Prelingers describe the library as "appropriation-friendly," and users are encouraged to reuse text and images in their own works and projects. Much of the material is in the public domain, and the copyright status of many items has been checked.
References
* [http://www.home.earthlink.net/~alysons/library.html Prelinger Library] , home page.
* [http://prelingerlibrary.blogspot.com Prelinger Library Blog]
* [http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger_library Digitized books from Prelinger Library] , at Internet Archive
* [http://prelinger.com/harpers.pdf "A World in Three Aisles: Browsing the post-digital library"] , byGideon Lewis-Kraus in "Harper's ", May 2007.
* [http://www.ebsi.umontreal.ca/isko2008/documents/abstracts/feinberg.pdf "Classificationist as Author: The Case of the Prelinger Library"] , by Melanie Feinberg (PDF). Paper to be presented at International Society for Knowledge Organization conference, Montreal, August 2008.
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