The Institute Archives & Special Collections are housed in the Fixman Room on the 3rd floor of Folsom Library.

Archival collections consist of the official records of the Institute which provide documentation of the development and growth of the Institute.

Materials include:

• Records of the presidents and senior administrators;
• Board of Trustees minutes;
• Department records (administration, curriculum, and programs);
• Campus publications;
• The Institute’s role in the community at large;
• The activities of its student body and alumni;
• Development of its physical plant and grounds.

Special Collections comprise rare books, manuscript materials, photographs, and printed ephemera documenting nineteenth- and twentieth-century science and technology.

Materials are collected in the following subject areas and disciplines:

• Civil engineering, with particular emphasis on bridge, canal, and railroad design and construction;

• Mechanics and mechanical engineering;

• Geology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, architecture, and science and technology studies;

• Alumni papers documenting professional careers or student life.

Among RPI’s most important historical holdings are the collections relating to John and Washington Roebling, Eben Norton Horsford, Amos Eaton, George Low’s tenure at NASA, and the Gerald and Sue Friedman History of Geology Rare Book Collection.

Rare Book Collection

The rare book collection comprises approximately 5,000 volumes documenting the development of science, technology, and engineering from the early modern period through the twentieth century. Strengths of the collection reflect the Institute’s historic emphasis on applied science and engineering education and include works in mathematics, physics, chemistry, alchemy, mapmaking, surveying, geology, mechanics, and civil and mechanical engineering.

The depth and coherence of the rare book collection are rooted in the establishment of the Hiland G. Batcheller, Jr. (RPI Trustee) Memorial Library in 1955, created through the support of the Board of Trustees and the Batcheller family to preserve and make available significant works in the history of science and technology. The collecting philosophy articulated at the founding of the Batcheller Library—emphasizing foundational texts, intellectual “milestones,” and the relationship between theory and practice—continues to shape the Institute Archives and Special Collection rare book holdings today. 

The collection is further distinguished by significant provenance libraries assembled by figures closely associated with the history of RPI and the development of American science and engineering, including the Roebling family, Amos Eaton, Benjamin Franklin Greene, and Gerald and Sue Friedman. Collectively, these materials illustrate the transmission of scientific knowledge from theory to application and the emergence of engineering as a professional discipline.

Rare books support research into the intellectual history of science and technology, the pedagogy of technical education, and the social and cultural contexts in which scientific and engineering knowledge was produced, taught, and applied.