Projects and Initiatives

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

• Documenting COVID-19
  A current project to collect original materials that tell the story of how the MIT community is experiencing and being affected by the changes to our community and world brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. All members of the MIT community are invited to contribute to this growing collection which will become which will be preserved and made accessible as part of the Institute’s historical record.
• 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.
• MIT and Slavery
  Students in the “MIT and Slavery” course are documenting how slavery influenced the career of William Barton Rogers (the founder of MIT), how it facilitated the establishment and early success of the Institute, and its role in the rise of science and engineering in the pre-Civil War United States.
• MIT History
  This site connects you to exhibits, information, and interesting facts about the rich history of MIT. There is information on a variety of MIT topics: the Institute, MIT Community and Life@MIT, Education and Research, Initiatives and Impacts, and MIT Facts.
• 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.
• 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.