Projects and Initiatives

From early document security and authentication, to jazz, to women at MIT, the projects and initiatives of the Department of Distinctive Collections cover a wide terrain. We welcome you to explore —

• Digital Exhibits
  Browse digital exhibitions that highlight MIT history or feature the MIT Libraries’ collections.
• Women@MIT
  The Women@MIT archival initiative aims to highlight MIT’s women faculty by acquiring, preserving, and making accessible their personal archives. The project is made possible through the generous support of Barbara Ostrom ’78 and Shirley Sontheimer.
• Herb Pomeroy Jazz Collection
  The Herb Pomeroy Jazz Collection was generously donated by the Pomeroy family. This rich collection contains materials spanning from the early 1940s to Pomeroy’s passing in 2007. It showcases Pomeroy’s musical and teaching careers, as well as his personal life.
• Letterlocking
  Letterlocking refers to the technology of folding and securing an epistolary writing substrate to function as its own envelope – a vital communications technology before the invention of the mass-produced envelope in the 19th century.
• 150 Years in the Stacks
  This online exhibit took shape during MIT’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2011. Each day for 150 days, we shared a single item from the Libraries’ collections, each item representing one of the years since MIT’s founding in 1861. On day one, we showed an item published in 1861. Day two, 1862, etc.