About the Barker Engineering Library About the Barker Engineering Library Steven Gass Head, Barker Engineering Library Barker Engineering Library and its branch, the Aeronautics and Astronautics Library , provide information to serve the teaching and research needs of the School of Engineering and all other instructional and research programs of the Institute that require materials in the engineering disciplines.
Barker offers a premier engineering collection , as well as two clusters of Athena terminals.
The main reading room of the Library is located on the fifth floor of Building 10, under the Great Dome of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This space has served as a library reading room since 1916, when the Institute moved to Cambridge from Boston, having constructed a group of imposing neoclassical buildings which today still comprise the center of the campus. A major renovation of the late 1960's was made possible by the generosity of James Madison Barker , Class of 1907, a distinguished alumnus and civil engineer who taught at MIT for seven years and later entered the business world. He was a member of the MIT Corporation for almost 40 years, being its oldest active member when he died in 1974 at age 88. Barker was an early leader in the field of international business who spoke eight languages, and had a lifelong interest in libraries and museums.