Harvard Library & MIT Libraries

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Harvard Library is a world-class academic library, an unparalleled resource for learning and research. Engaging users through curated discovery, digital collections, reimagined physical space, and specialized research support, Harvard Library delivers exceptional experiences to its user communities. Serving as an information hub, the Library connects users to related disciplines and to University-wide teaching resources. Harvard Library’s holdings range from traditional print collections to rapidly expanding digital resources. In the course of 375 years, Harvard Library has grown from a single collection of 400 volumes to the largest university library in the world. Today, the collections include over 21 million volumes, and vast archives of primary source material. Over the past two decades, Harvard has developed a technical infrastructure that incorporates digital content into the Library’s collections and services. The Library’s large scale digital preservation repository, DRS, contains more than 65 million digital files in many different digitized and born digital formats. In 2008, the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) was formed with the charge to spearhead campus-wide initiatives to open, share and preserve scholarship. The Harvard Library is at a pivotal moment as it moves forward into a new phase of managing and creating large digital collections at scale which both builds on its past achievements and significantly expands its contributions in new arenas, such as data curation and online learning.

 Established in 1862 with a gift of seven volumes three years before classes began, the MIT Libraries continues to support the Institute’s commitment to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. The Libraries are a leader in Open Access, making more than 70,000 scholarly works by MIT authors freely available to the world. The DSpace repository software was developed at MIT with early support and sponsorship by the Libraries. The Institute Archives and Special Collections launched a proactive digital archives program in 2011 to acquire, preserve, and make available MIT-created content of all kinds, including administrative records, faculty archives, and research outcomes and documentation. MIT Libraries has been a Charter member of ArchivesSpace, an early adopter of Archivematica, and board member of the BitCurator Alliance. Since 2012, the Libraries has consolidated its investment in digital preservation to develop a sustainable digital preservation program and has hosted the Digital Preservation Management workshops series, the longest running curriculum development and continuing education program.