Archiving Ephemera: The Prelinger Library

The Prelinger collection contains over 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films, the mass of which resides at the Library of Congress. According to Librarian of Congress James H. Billington,

"This comprehensive collection provides a unique window into the world of 20th century American ideas and lifestyles.The picture it gives is quite distinct from that found in Hollywood feature films and newsreels. These are the films that children watched in the classroom, that workers viewed in their union halls, that advertisers presented in corporate boardrooms, and that homemakers saw at women���s club meetings."

Nearly 2,000 films from the Prelinger Archive are available for online viewing at internet access behemoth Internet Archive. Because of the Library of Congress acquisition, Internet Archive acts as a wayback machine, sort of like an archive of an online archive that no longer exists.

Selection Decisions

Because the Prelinger Collection in its original online format is no longer active, and because the Library of Congress has not made the collection accessable from its website, the only way to access these films digitally is through Internet Archive. The site claims to constantly crawl the internet to ensure that all born digital ephemera and online materials are archived, it does not explicitly express how it selects which collections and sites are made available. Additionally, because the original Prelinger Collection website is no longer active, it isn't entirely clear how creator Rick Prelinger determined which films from his collection were digitized, although sites related to Prelinger seem to indicate his commitment to archiving and making available any historically or culturally significant motion pictures commissioned by businesses, charities, advocacy groups, and state or local government units between 1897 and 1980.



Metadata

Virtually no metadata accompanies images at this time. The site offers information, if available, regarding what organization is responsible for creation, dates, as well as user commentary. A link for more information about the films is provided that directs users to a textual licensing and access disclaimer page. Here, it is implied that more specific information about specific films will be available when the Library of Congress creates its National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia. Additionally, this site recommends contacting the Prelinger Archive directly to access further information as well as additional images.

Object Characteristics

As stated above, the site offers almost 2,000 images from the larger Prelinger Archive. All are available for download, although the site suggests crediting the Prelinger Archive or Internet Archive by Getty Images for re-use. The images are extremely well preserved and digitized although the site does not offer any specific information as to preservation or digitization practices.

Intended Audience

The site is extremely accessible allowing usability by the general public and any interested users. However, the lack of descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata makes the site less useful for academic research.