Prelinger Library

The Prelinger Library in San Francisco offers thousands of historical maps, zines, documents, books and other materials, all of which are available for artists to reference or reuse. Its collections serve activists, writers, musicians, composers, poets, novelists, journalists, and historians. The Library was established in 2004 and has served over ten thousand reserach visits. Its collections have supported the production of artists talks series, films, novels as well as open-ended explorations by people working across all media types. As a 100% community-supported project, the Library s free to pursue equity and justice, abolition and libration, and to serve the community as a trans- and queer-safe space and infoshop for survival and resistance. The Library puts hospitality first and offers sparkling water or tea to every visitor.

The collections also hold government-produced documents from eras when artists and writers were widely employed in their production, offering art and literature in unexpected places as well as roadmaps toward civil societies. With stacks materials ranging from eighteenth century documents to works produced this week, the room serves as a slip in spacetime within which a couple hundred years of human experience and experiments can be browsed. Library hosts represent a range of subject-matter expertises including public transportation, radio science, zine making, natural history, library science, book arts, moving image history and production, and nonfiction writing.

The Library also exists as an experiment in analog–digital hybridity. Its stacks can be explored remotely here (please press the STARS button for maximum experience). Many items that have been digitized can be accessed through browsing Stacks Explorer, or directly at our portal at Internet Archive, our longtime ally in the fight for free access to cultural materials.

The Library is currently open for drop-in visits three days a week in San Francisco. Please visit our website to check the current open hours when planning your visit. Information about artist residencies, more about the history of the Library, and information about the people behind the project can all be found on the website.

The Library's founders also operate a sibling organization in parallel, which is a film archives (Prelinger Archives). Moving image materials from the archives can be accessed through its portal at Internet Archive here.