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Prelinger Archives, http://www.archivc.org/ details/prelinger. Rick Prelinger, in association with the Internet Archive, San Francisco. Reviewed Aug. 15,2007.
The Prelinger Archives contains "ephemeral" films (defined as "advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur" films) available for free download. Rick Prelinger began this archive in the 1980s to preserve scarce film materials that historians have tended to overlook in favor of Hollywood productions. In 2002, the Library of Congress acquired sixty thousand titles from Prelinger's collection; but the Prelinger Archives still exists and continues to grow, allowing this Web site to offer nearly two thousand short films that vividly document the industrial, governmental, educational, and emotional history of the twentieth century. This trove of "lost" treasures, most of which are in the public domain, come in a variety of formats for easy downloading. That, combined with the films' short length (most are twenty minutes or less), make them ideal for classroom use.
Modern historians will probably find greatest...