Megan Prelinger’s library in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood is a museum of possibility, featuring a wide range of historical records and artifacts, including a prosthetic leg from World War I.
A Life of Collecting
Prelinger’s journey as a collector began when she was a teenager, working temp jobs and living in San Francisco. She developed skills as a typist and eventually landed a job in the cellular telephone industry, where she edited documents and proofread engineering materials.
After studying anthropology, linguistics, and radio science at Reed College, Prelinger traveled to China, where she witnessed the social unrest leading up to the Tiananmen Square crackdown. She later joined a writing and research collective in Berkeley and began collecting books and historical records.
The Prelinger Library
The Prelinger Library, founded in 2004, is a unique collection of over 50,000 items, including books, art, and historical records. The library is housed in a warehouse space in SoMa, with materials stored on 10-foot-high steel shelves. The library also features a remote-access browsing environment, called Stacks Explorer, which allows disabled and remote researchers to explore the collection online.
Prelinger sees the library as a resource for the future, providing evidence-based hope and supporting the reimagining of the world. The library’s collection includes archives of New Deal-era government publications, which document a time when housing, infrastructure, art, and social services were built out at a national scale.
Original reporting: Mission Local — read the source article.
