Founded in 1941 in
Norwalk, Connecticut by the electrical engineer, industrialist, and historian
Bern Dibner, the library holdings include important scientific literature from antiquity to the 20th century. The library was originally located at the
Burndy Engineering Company in
Norwalk, Connecticut. The remainder of the Burndy Library collection remained in Norwalk until after Bern Dibner's death in 1988. It was moved to the campus of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1992 with the establishment of the
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. After residing there for more than a decade, the collection needed to be moved due to the pending demolition of the building which housed it. In November 2006, 67,000 volumes of the Burndy Library (47,000 rare books and 20,000 reference books), along with several hundred small manuscript collections and a collection of artwork and objects, were transferred to the
Huntington Library in
San Marino, California as a gift of the Dibner family and the Dibner Fund. The library offers a number of history of science fellowships, a lecture series and an annual conference. It is one of the Huntington's most heavily used collections, and continues to grow and expand through the Huntington's multi-faceted approach to collection use, conservation and management. ==References==