“... a library project—part public archive, part private collection, part digital-appropriation center, part art installation.”
The description by Gideon-Lewis Krauss of this library makes our eyes light up. But it is not the Sitterwerk’s Art Library that he describes in his essay “A World in Three Aisles: Browsing the Post-digital Library”—and also not the further development of the dynamic order that we are pursuing in this year’s “Transfer” project. What is referred to instead is the Prelinger Library in San Francisco. Lewis-Kraus’s article, which was published in 2007, tells of Megan and Rick Prelinger and their drive to design their library in such a way that it always continues to hold surprises for visitors; their passion for books and their availability in analogue and digital form; organization systems that sidestep conventional library concepts. The parallels between the Sitterwerk and the Prelinger Library are numerous and, thirteen years after its publication, the essay continues to point to central questions and challenges that digitization in particular brings with respect to the availability of systems of knowledge.
We thank the author and the photographer for their interest in the project and their approval to republish the text in its original form in this context.
First published in Harper's Magazine (May 2007), pp. 47–54. With a photo essay by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin.
