Carnegie Mellon University is one of the world's leading institutions of research and education into technology, engineering and computer science. It was created in part by a behest of Andrew Carnegie in 1900 to the city of Pittsburgh to create a school where working-class men and women of Pittsburgh could learn practical skills, trades and crafts that would enhance their careers, lives and communities.
Soon faced with the demand for baccalaureate programs, Carnegie Technical Schools changed its name to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, or "Carnegie Tech", and began offering bachelor's degrees through its College of Engineering and College of Fine Arts. Its name was changed to Carnegie Mellon University in 1967 to reflect a merger with the Mellon Institute, a science research center founded by the Mellon family of Pittsburgh.
Carnegie Mellon has consistently set the standard for an innovation-led research institution, recruiting leading scientists, offering sponsored fellowships with government and industry leaders and pioneering nontraditional interdisciplinary research. The university was a pioneer in both artificial intelligence and the discipline of computer science. Interdisciplinary research would become the hallmark of Carnegie Mellon. Its history department offers both undergraduate and graduate programs focused on the history and anthropology of science, technology and medicine, and there are many units within the university where scholars are working at the intersection of technology and social change, such as the School of Computer Science's Human-Computer Interaction Institute and the School of Architecture's CodeLab.
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries is home to notable collections in the history of science and technology; mechanical, symbolic, and digital computing; cryptology; robotics; and botanical literature and art. The Libraries’ research collections are organized into three units: the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, the Posner Center for Special Collections, and the University Archives. Learn more:
Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
The Posner Center for Special Collections
Carnegie Mellon University Archives
The Posner Center for Special Collections holds Carnegie Mellon’s collection of rare books and early technologies. Areas of strength include the histories of computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, cryptography, and early scientific thought. The Posner Memorial Collection, formed by Pittsburgh entrepreneur Henry Posner Senior (1889-1976), includes early printed books on the experimental and mathematical sciences (early editions by Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Kepler, Curie, Einstein, and Darwin, among others). The Traub McCorduck Collection of the History of Computing forms a selective record of the evolution of machine calculation and encryption from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Assembled by Joseph F. Traub (1932–2015; head of CMU School of Computer Science, 1971–79), the collection was gifted to CMU Libraries by Pamela McCorduck (1940–2021), an authority on the early history of AI and Traub’s wife. The Posner Center also holds the working libraries of pioneering artificial intelligence researchers Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon, and Pamela McCorduck’s collection of early AI art, including several works by Harold Cohen.
The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, founded in 1961, holds one of the world’s most important collections of rare botanical literature and art. Built on Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt’s foundational collection, the Institute’s four departments—Art, Archives, Bibliography, and Library—support scholarship in the history of botany, plant science, horticulture, botanical illustration, and natural history. Notable holdings include the Cornell University Cytology Microscope Slide Collection (with many slides made by Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock), the writings of Michel Adanson, the Strandell Collection of Linnaeana, (which brings together nearly all known editions and translations of the works of Carolus Linnaeus), the Torner Collection of Sessé and Mociño Biological Illustrations (which includes 1,989 botanical and zoological watercolor illustrations made during the Royal Spanish Exploring Expedition of 1787–1803), the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service Collection and the Hitchcock-Chase Collection of Grass Drawings.
The Carnegie Mellon University Archives holds records documenting the development of both Carnegie Mellon as a research university and the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research as a home of applied research. The archive also holds the papers of key faculty members. Notable collecting areas include computer science and robotics. Computer science collections include the papers of Herbert Simon (Nobel Prize, 1978) and Allen Newell who won a Turing Award with Simon in 1975 for their work in artificial intelligence, Mary Shaw (software architecture), Raj Reddy (who received a Turing Award for his work in artificial intelligence and speech recognition), Richard Shoup (computer graphics), and Dan Siewiorek (mobile computing). Robotics collections include the Robotics Institute (including over a petabyte of video documentation), the Field Robotics Center, Red Whittaker (autonomous vehicles), Manuela Veloso (autonomous systems and agents), Takeo Kanade (computer vision), and Hans Moravec (mobile robotics and futurism). Other collections include Clifford Glenwood Shull (who won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on neutron scattering) and Truman Kohman (radiochemistry and gamma waves). Finally, the Archive includes key documentation of the social history of science and artificial intelligence through our oral history collection and the Pamela McCorduck Papers, which include her early interviews with the people who shaped the field of Artificial Intelligence, including Simon, Newell, Ed Feigenbaum, John McCarthy, and Marvin Minsky.
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries’ holdings comprise approximately 35,000 rare books; more than 50 mechanical computational devices and cryptographic machines; early AI art; papers and archival collections of Carnegie Mellon faculty, researchers and alumni; and one of the foremost collections of rare books and art on plant science and historical botany.
Library Catalog: https://www.library.cmu.edu/
Note: Search results can be pre-filtered by location. Go to “Advanced Search > Search for > Special Collections.” Queries will return materials held in both the Hunt Institute and the Posner Center.
Archival Finding Aids: https://findingaids.library.cmu.edu/
Digital Collections: https://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/
Note: Key digitized collections include the papers of Herb Simon, Allen Newell, Joseph Traub, and Clifford Glenwood Shull, and the Posner Memorial Collection.
Important Information for Researchers
Researchers are welcome to consult the collections of the Posner Center for Special Collections, Carnegie Mellon University Archives, and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Information about access policies, planning research visits, and using the collections is available at:
Posner Center for Special Collections: https://www.library.cmu.edu/policies/using-special-collections
University Archives: https://library.cmu.edu/distinctive-collections/university-archives
Fellowship Opportunities
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries sponsor two short-term fellowship programs: the Posner Fellowships for Research & Creative Practice and the Hunt Institute Fellowships. Each program awards two fellowships annually, supporting 2–4 week on-site residencies with a stipend of $3,500. Fellows pursue research or creative projects that engage directly with the Libraries’ collections. Applications are due in January each year.