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Rob Macfarlane,<br>Polina Anikeeva,<br>Juejun Hu,<br>Cem Tasan,<br>Yet-Ming Chiang,<br>Rafael Jaramillo
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Lament for the MIT Libraries
Elizabeth Cavicchi
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May/June 2026Vol. XXXVIII No. 6
Lament for the MIT Libraries
Elizabeth Cavicchi
https://fnl.mit.edu/may-june-2026/lament-for-the-mit-libraries/
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For universities across time, the library was the heart, research center, and substance of the knowledge and processes of education that any university contributed to, built on and extended. Indigenous Poet Kaitlin Curtice celebrates how libraries pervade, inspire and become substance of our lives, communities and development [see the first quote below]. Libraries invite us into worlds, understandings and questions that stretch our experience and put us in dialogue [see second quote below] with the direct words and efforts of those of disparate times, outlooks, cultures and conditions.
I write with dismay, grief and sorrow for the permanent closure of MIT Libraries Barker, Dewey and Rotch [not yet closed, but likely to suffer the same fate, ed. note], and termination of library staff in those libraries. For over half a century, I have learned, studied, researched, reflected, taught, created and rested in these libraries, as an MIT undergraduate, graduate and postdoc student, as an MIT researcher and instructor, and as an MIT alum. Across the diverse ever-changing areas of the studies and investigations that involve me and my students – from physics to poetry, from historical science to electrical engineering, from sculpture to photography, from philosophy to psychology – all the MIT Libraries have stimulated, opened, and connected us with human efforts, current and historical, to understand, express and learn in and with the world. Welcoming for me, and all students, the MIT Libraries were oases, spaces apart from the stresses, deadlines, demands of this school, where one could reflect apart, go to a familiar bookshelf, read in companionship with others and be challenged by human voices new, unexpected and concerned for nature, learning and truth. The MIT Librarians and MIT Libraries Circulation desk were available, interested and open to assist for whatever confused questions, incomplete references, tangential details or specific analyses we might be working on or stumped by [see MIT 1912, third quote below]. There were always other places to look, another staircase to climb, or resources to consider. MIT Libraries could open to anywhere and also facilitate rethinking of one’s own understanding...