Just over a century ago, the world grappled with a major pandemic when the H1N1 influenza virus infected about 500 million people in 1918 and 1919. When the virus first appeared, MIT had just relocated from Boston to its current campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and World War I was approaching its conclusion. As the MIT community now grapples with Covid-19, the MIT Libraries’ Nora Murphy has been exploring archival materials related to the 1918 flu pandemic, which similarly disrupted life at the Institute. Murphy, the archivist for researcher services in the…
