MIT Libraries Department of Distinctive Collections

DDC includes the Aga Khan Documentation Center, archival and manuscript collections that document the history of the Institute and people involved with it, as well as visual collections, rare books, and a teaching collection. Browse all Distinctive Collections units.

MIT ArchivesSpace

ArchivesSpace holds the descriptions of materials in the Department of Distinctive Collections, particularly archival and manuscript collections in various formats.

Dome

Dome is an online repository for a variety of digitized materials from the Department of Distinctive Collections.

DSpace@MIT

DSpace is the digital place to go for research at MIT — including articles, technical reports, MIT Theses, and more.

There is more than one way to go about finding materials on your research topic in MIT's collections.

Think broadly — searching for the name of a person or department is a good start, but expanding your scope will get you more results.

Say you're looking for the history of a particular department. You could search for:

• Records of that department
• People who worked in that department
• Deans of that department
• Other Departments, Labs, and Centers (DLCs) that the department worked with
• Projects and research from that department
• Students and alumni from that department

Our reading room is generally open:

Occasionally the reading room is closed for Institute holidays, or for classes and events held in the reading room. See MIT Libraries Hours for changes and exceptions to these hours.

The reading room is located in building 14N, room 118 at 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge. See our Reading Room Policies for more information about what to expect during your visit.

Please note that most of our collections do not include item-level descriptions in ArchivesSpace. This means that there will often be a title of a file or item as a part of its folder or box, but there will rarely be additional information about the specific item in the finding aid.

If you are researching former students, alumni, faculty, or staff at MIT, see the MIT People LibGuide for sources of interest and commonly-consulted collections.