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March 03, 2005
Library Field Trip: Prelinger Library
The upside of not being fully employed is having free time during the week. So I took advantage of that and went to the Prelinger Library.
If the name Prelinger is familiar to you, Rick P. is a film archivist/preservationist who created the Prelinger Archive of ephemeral films (the digitized versions of which are hosted by the Internet Archive). However, this is a completely different project. Rick and his partner, Megan, have created and opened their own semi-public library.
The library is one large room in a semi-industrial space in the SOMA section of downtown San Francisco. It contains around 40,000 books, periodicals, government documents and ephemera contained along 6 shelves, some 15-20 feet in height (maybe more, I'm not good with spatial relations and I forgot to ask). There are a couple of desks, a copier and a flatbed scanner for making print and digital copies from materials, but there's no check-out available.
Okay, you should sit down now. Take a few deep breaths. Have a bit of vinegar handy to wave in front of your nose. Ready?
There's no catalog. There's no call number system of classification. There's not even rigorously enforced alphabetization of titles (or authors) within sections. It's deliberate and there's a philosophy behind it.
The library is organized by the subject interests of Megan and Rick, with related topics (as they see it) shelved next to each other. In the natural science area, you have water data followed by weather material, followed by air material, then fire material. Works dealing with graphic design leads to illustration, which leads to advertising, then television to radio to music to popular culture. Monographs, gov docs and periodicals are shelved together within a subject area. There is a separate fiction section, but it's likely that the fiction will be interfiled into the other parts of the collection.
It's an intuitive, browseable collection, with storage-room type rolling steps to access the material outside of the browser's reach. The library has no full-time, or even paid, employees ... it has irregular hours, but interested users can make appointments to use the library and take advantage of drop-in days that are announced each week on the library's website.
How did the Prelingers go from avid book collectors to opening their own library? Well, they were concerned about de-accession policies and unpopular materials that didn't have high circulation rates but may still be of interest to scholars, artists, auto-didacts, etc. A number of items in the collection, especially the government documents, were acquired from libraries, and still retain the call numbers and property stamps. After finding relatively inexpensive warehouse space in San Francisco, they moved their collection to the current location, organized a gang of volunteer shelvers, and opened for public use.
It is a fascinating experiment. If you're ever in the San Francisco area, you should definitely go for a visit. And, if you've heard of other such autonomous libraries, please share ... perhaps an informal network can be established for these types of institutions.
Posted by misseli at March 3, 2005 05:49 PM
Comments
Like it! Continuum of catalog by location. Actually,
loved it. Go Eli!
Bank
Posted by: Hank the Bank at March 8, 2005 06:10 AM