Son[i]a #130
Rick Prelinger
Rick Prelinger is an archivist, writer, filmmaker, and outsider librarian. For the past twenty-five years, the founder of the Prelinger Archives has amassed film material that is generally ignored by traditional archives, resulting in a collection that prioritizes access and reuse as methods of preservation.
Rick has partnered with the Internet Archive (of which he is a board member) to make 2,100 films available online for free viewing, downloading and reuse. With Megan Prelinger, he’s co-founder of Prelinger Library, an appropriation-friendly private research library open to the public in downtown San Francisco.
Rick Prelinger speaks on the future of archives and issues relating to access to archives and culture.
related episodes
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Interview with Rick Prelinger about home movies, alternative anthropology, lost landscapes and what he calls “archival anxiety syndrome”.
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Radio
Originally published as a hidden track or 'easter egg', this text was excerpted and adapted by Megan Prelinger from an editorial column titled 'Poles and Zeros' published in 'Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers' in September, 1961. It goes back to the very first instances in which the term 'radio' was used, reconstructing a chronology of how it has been used until it became a shared notion and concept.
Megan Prelinger
Megan Prelinger talks about ephemeral literature, the inner workings of the Prelinger Library and the possibility of looking at the world through the lens of everyday evidence.
Conversation with Rick Prelinger on his film collection
This is a conversation by email with ephemeral film collector Rick Prelinger, which took place on April 2011.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with the archivist, writer and filmmaker Rick Prelinger.