Prelinger Library Blog

Animator, filmmaker, writer and artist George Griffin recently donated his large and wonderful collection of "how-to" art, photog...

I do love a good counter-narrative. As I continue research toward the next book, it's inevitable that from time to time things turn up t...

It's simple to say that the library is built upon the generosity of many people, but what that means is often difficult to specify. It m...

Chris Carlsson has assembled an amazing portrait of San Francisco's hidden landscapes on his Streets Blog. Visit it, and see portraits ...

Hmmm, interesting mashup of good week, bad week. First the Bay Guardian award, then we are tickled by the attention paid to the film archive...

Wow, a local honor. We're thrilled to have been designated "Best Place to See Old S.F." in the Bay Guardian's July 29th ...

Rick recently discovered this volume: It's v. 42, n. 3, Fall 2001 of American Studies , and features several essays on libraries as cul...

Wow, Maker Faire was incredible! The how-to library and re ading room that we installed was fairly mobbed with visitors. Without the support...

Our thanks to interviewer Michael Krasny for hosting our one-hour on-air presence at KQED this morning. The Forum program that features the ...

The library has never been in better shape. And it's only because of a dedicated core group of volunteers. In mid-April Freya Channing c...

We picked up a few jewels for the science fiction collection at Kayo Books recently. Anyone able to drop in to their store in San Francisco...

Thanks to the Mission Mission blog for such nice words about our presentation at Pop-Up Magazine on Wednesday night! How sweet! Visitors re...

As in past years, we welcome visitors to San Francisco for the Thanksgiving holiday. The library will be open on Wednesday, November 26 fro...

We've been spending a lot of time de-duplicating and honing the collection, in line with our "spaghetti-sauce theory of collection ...

It's been a hummingly busy summer in the library; a summary of summer notables will have to keep for the moment. Today's notable was...

First and foremost we owe profuse thanks to our wonderful intern Freya Channing. Without Freya's energy, we would have taken much longer...

Ever seen the back of the room empty before?

The past couple of weeks have seen great changes set in motion around the library. First, we obtained a lease renewal that will keep us in o...

Murder Can Be Fun now has a blog. The genre-bending, page-turning zine of evil fun has been written and published for two decades by our ass...

We had a terrific time at the Maker Faire this weekend. It was an eye-popping blitz of robots, crafts, kinetic sculpture, re-engineering eve...

We're going to bring a miniature library to Maker Faire on Saturday and Sunday, May 3 and 4, at the San Mateo County Event Center and F...

We are delighted to announce our first, and hopefully not last, collaboration with the Third Coast International Audio Festival — Radio Eph...

For June 2006 – January 2008, the percentage of Library interns admitted to Ph.D. programs at Harvard before age 23 = 100%! Congratulations ...

Writing today from the CPSR conference on technology in wartime. The conference speakers all make interesting points that with increasing t...

The library now has a MySpace page ! Meet up with us in cyberspace and make the library your "friend." --MSP

This morning the Supreme Court denied cert in our case. Lessig explains on his blog.

What fell off the shelf in the October 30 temblor? Geologic forces reached up and pulled... Great Science Fiction by Scientists (ed. Conkli...

That's what's going to happen on Wednesday, October 3, at 7:16 pm (the moment of civil twilight ). Illuminated Corridor is putting ...

The 10th Circuit handed down its opinion (PDF here ) in the case of Golan et al. v. Gonzales yesterday. Golan challenged the constitutional...

London's Warburg Institute has often been called the inspiration for our own classification and arrangement system, but we're actu...

The coverage of Maricopa County's departure from Dewey continues. This morning it's in the Wall Street Journal .

We continue to send books and periodicals to the Internet Archive scanning center. Some recent periodical titles that have been digitized: ...

We just discovered this new project, the Chicago Underground Library. Like us, it's independent, iconoclastic, and site-specific. Like ...

In May 2005 I had the privilege of presenting Panorama Ephemera at the Provisions Library in D.C. Provisions is a walk-in publicly access...

...amid controversy . The LibrarianInBlack raises questions too . And now it's June 11 and there's a very active MetaFilter thread .

We've been recently pleased by the unexpected arrival of some terrific donations. We appreciate that people have been responding to the ...

It's an open Wednesday in the library and there are seven women working on projects here. Two on a movie, two on a local history project...

Both of us have been influenced at a core level by punk culture and politics. We like to think of the library as a DIY (that's do-it-y...

Here at the Video, Education and Open Content conference at Columbia, sponsored by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning ...

A book fund established in 2006 through the generosity of Kenneth N. Swezey provides us with a stake to purchase English-language books publ...

We've said publicly that we don't plan to catalog our collection, and yet recently the temptations of LibraryThing have made this p...

I'm thrilled to discover (thru Silliman's blog ) Eclipse , which describes itself as a "free on-line archive focusing on digita...

You can read the Harper's piece on our library here .

The 9th Circuit has denied our petition for a rehearing in Kahle et al. v. Gonzales. The announcement and link to opinion is here ; some ba...

We are delighted to announce that the Itinerant Poetry Librarian , who's in San Francisco for a spell, will be installing her Library a...

As Gray Brechin made clear in his California Studies Association lecture weekend before last, the legacy of the New Deal still surrounds ...

In collaboration with the Internet Archive and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, we're starting to digitize Survey and it...

It shouldn't be so difficult to get to our scanned books, but right now it is. There's full-text search of most of our online title...

As of this morning we are up to 2098 items. Here's a link to new additions as they appear. Rankings are overrated, but collecting habi...

Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in depth about the library in the May issue of Harper's . It's online right now for subscribers and will ...

After many archivists protested, the Society of American Archivists Council has reversed its decision to purge the archives of the SAA lists...

I joined the Society of American Archivists last year and attended their 2006 conference in Washington, D.C. It was a fascinating gatherin...