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Journals and Databases licensed by MIT are available to members of the community using Touchstone authentication, or to anyone using public computers in the MIT Libraries' public locations.
Historical Newspapers - Includes links to online African American Newspapers, African American Periodicals, Black Abolitionist Papers, Ku Klux Klan Newspapers, and more...
MIT People - This guide serves as a list of resources for those hoping to complete biographical research on students, alumni, faculty, or staff using material in the Department of Distinctive Collections.
Begun in 1995, the MIT Black History Project is an ongoing collaborative research effort sponsored by the MIT Office of the Provost. The project works to document the role of Black life at MIT since the Institute’s founding in 1861.
MIT Reports to the President (T171.M195): 1871 to 2002 and 1994 to the present
The publication Reports to the President is a compilation of the annual reports of academic and administrative units of the Institute summarizing the year’s accomplishments and introducing future plans. Included in some years are reports from the secretary, treasurer, and chancellor of the Institute. Collectively, the volumes represent the starting point for any research into the history of the Institute.
MIT Course Catalogues (T171.M42): 1865 to 1997 and 1998 to the present
The MIT Course Catalogue, also referred to as the MIT Bulletin and the MIT Course Catalog, is a rich source of information on the courses and programs that have made the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the major institution it is today.
The Tech (T171.M45): 1881-present
The MIT student newspaper.
Technique (T171.M4257): 1885-1930
MIT's yearbook.
MIT Handbooks (T171.M42.S678, T171.M42.T4 and T171.M42h.H847): 1913-2008
The MIT Handbooks consist of general information about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus, local culture and social activities, and academics. The publications have various names and creators — The Handbook of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Social Beaver, This is MIT, MIT Today, How to Get Around MIT (HowToGAMIT) — but generally provide similar information on how to navigate life in and around MIT.
The MIT Libraries' catalog, Barton, will list the shelf location as "Institute Archives - Reference Collection" if an item is shelved in the reading room (14N-118). Advance notice is not required to use materials shelved in the reading room.
All other materials need to be requested at least two business days in advance of a visit so that they can be retrieved from off-site storage. Use our online form, Ask Distinctive Collections, to request material. Please provide the following information:
Ebony and Ivy by
A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institution's complex and contested involvement in slavery-setting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country. But Brown's troubling past was far from unique. InEbony and Ivy, Craig Steven Wilder, a rising star in the profession of history, lays bare uncomfortable truths about race, slavery, and the American academy. Many of America's revered colleges and universities-from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to Rutgers, Williams College, and UNC-were soaked in the sweat, the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. The earliest academies proclaimed their mission to Christianize the savages of North America, and played a key role in white conquest. Later, the slave economy and higher education grew up together, each nurturing the other. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Enslaved Americans waited on faculty and students; academic leaders aggressively courted the support of slave owners and slave traders. Significantly, as Wilder shows, our leading universities, dependent on human bondage, became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained them. Ebony and Ivy is a powerful and propulsive study and the first of its kind, revealing a history of oppression behind the institutions usually considered the cradle of liberal politics.
William Barton Rogers and the Idea of MIT by
Winner, 2009 Outstanding Book Award, History of Education SocietyWinner, 2009 Richard Slatten Prize for Excellence in Virginia Biography, Virginia Historical Society Conceptual founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, William Barton Rogers was a highly influential scientific mind and educational reformer of the nineteenth century. A. J. Angulo recounts the largely unknown story of one man's ideas and how they gave way to the creation of one of America's premier institutions of higher learning. MIT's long tradition of teaching, research, and technological innovation for real-world applications is inexorably linked to Rogers' educational philosophy. Emphasizing the "useful arts"--a curriculum of specialized scientific study stressing theory and practice, innovation and functionality--Rogers sought to revolutionize standard educational practices of the day. Controversial in an era typified by a generalist approach to teaching the sciences, Rogers' model is now widely emulated by institutions throughout the world. Exploring the intersection of Rogers' educational philosophy and the rise of technical institutes in America, this biography offers a long-overdue account of the man behind MIT.
A Widening Sphere: Evolving Cultures at MIT by
How MIT's first nine presidents helped transform the Institute from a small technical school into a major research university. MIT was founded in 1861 as a polytechnic institute in Boston's Back Bay, overshadowed by its neighbor across the Charles River, Harvard University. Harvard offered a classical education to young men of America's ruling class; the early MIT trained men (and a few women) from all parts of society as engineers for the nation's burgeoning industries. Over the years, MIT expanded its mission and ventured into other fields--pure science, social science, the humanities--and established itself in Cambridge as Harvard's enduring rival. In A Widening Sphere, Philip Alexander traces MIT's evolution from polytechnic to major research institution through the lives of its first nine presidents, exploring how the ideas, outlook, approach, and personality of each shaped the school's intellectual and social cultures. Alexander describes, among otherthings, the political skill and entrepreneurial spirit of founder and first president, William Rogers; institutional growing pains under John Runkle; Francis Walker's campaign to broaden the curriculum, especially in the social sciences, and to recruit first-rate faculty; James Crafts, whose heart lay in research, not administration; Henry Pritchett's thwarted effort to merge with Harvard (after which he decamped to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching); Richard Maclaurin's successful strategy to move the institute to Cambridge, after considering other sites (including a golfclub in Brighton); the brilliant, progressive Ernest Nichols, who succumbed to chronic illness and barely held office; Samuel Stratton's push towards a global perspective; and Karl Compton's vision for a new kind of Institute--a university polarized around science and technology. Through these interlocking yet independent portraits, Alexander reveals the inner workings of a complex and dynamic community of innovators.
Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT by
The intellectual heritage of MIT: an account of "the flow of ideas" about science and education that shaped the Institute as it emerged and that inspires it today. The motto on the seal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Mens et Manus"--"mind and hand"--signals the Institute's dedication to what MIT founder William Barton Rogers called "the most earnest cooperation of intelligent culture with industrial pursuits." Mind and Hand traces the ideas about science and education that have shaped MIT and defined its mission--from the new science of the Enlightenment era and the ideals of representative democracy spurred by the Industrial Revolution to new theories on the nature and role of higher education in nineteenth-century America. MIT emerged in mid-century as an experiment in scientific and technical education, with its origins in the tension between these old and new ideas. Mind and Hand was undertaken by Julius Stratton after his retirement from the presidency of MIT and continued by Loretta Mannix after his death; Philip N. Alexander, of the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, stepped in to complete the project. The combined efforts of these three authors have given us what Julius Stratton envisioned--"a coherent account of the flow of ideas" from which MIT emerged. of MIT and continued by Loretta Mannix after his death; Philip N. Alexander, of the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, stepped in to complete the project. The combined efforts of these three authors have given us what Julius Stratton envisioned--"a coherent account of the flow of ideas" from which MIT emerged.of MIT and continued by Loretta Mannix after his death; Philip N. Alexander, of the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, stepped in to complete the project. The combined efforts of these three authors have given us what Julius Stratton envisioned--"a coherent account of the flow of ideas" from which MIT emerged.of MIT and continued by Loretta Mannix after his death; Philip N. Alexander, of the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, stepped in to complete the project. The combined efforts of these three authors have given us what Julius Stratton envisioned--"a coherent account of the flow of ideas" from which MIT emerged.
The Spectrum student magazine, T171.M42k.S643
Senior Portfolio yearbook, T171.M46.S4.
Shelved in the Distinctive Collections Reading Room, the Senior Portfolios have been published in the following iterations:
Class of '84 M.I.T. Twenty-fifth Anniversary Book, 1884-1909 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, T171.M4258 1884
