- Prelinger Archives
The Prelinger Archives is a collection of
films relating to U.S.cultural history , the evolution of the Americanlandscape ,everyday life andsocial history . It was physically located inNew York City from1982 -2002 and is now inSan Francisco .The Archives was founded by
Rick Prelinger in1982 in order to preserve what he calls "ephemeral" films: films sponsored by corporations and organizations, educational films, and amateur and home movies. Typically, ephemeral films were produced to fulfill specific purposes at specific times, and many exist today only by chance or accident. About 65% of the Archive's holdings are in thepublic domain because their copyrights have expired, or because they were U.S. productions that were published without proper copyright notice.The stated goal of the Prelinger Archives is to "collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere."
By
2001 it had acquired 60,000 completed films of varying lengths and over 30,000 cans of unedited film. In2002 , theLibrary of Congress acquired the contents of the Archives as of that date. As of autumn 2008, the Archives holds about 4,000 films on video and as digital files and over 50,000 cans of film acquired since the Library of Congress transaction, much of which will be donated to the Library of Congress in2009 .Compared to many other moving image archives, Prelinger Archives provides a relatively high level of public access to its collections. Approximately 2,000
public domain films are available for download and unrestricted reuse on the Internet at theInternet Archive , and 500 additional films will be made available in 2008-2009. All the films in the archives can be licensed for production use throughGetty Images .Prelinger Archives and its sister organization
Prelinger Library participate in theOpen Content Alliance .Trivia
* Footage from the archives was used for
Weird Al Yankovic 's music video, "Pancreas" [http://www.blashfieldstudio.com/] , and thePeak Oil documentary "The End of Suburbia ".External links
* [http://www.prelinger.com/ Prelinger Archives' website]
* [http://www.panix.com/~footage/shorthistory1.html An Informal History of Prelinger Archives]
* [http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger Prelinger Collection at the Internet Archive]
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