The collection supports both general research and the curriculum of Smith College classes.
[2] It was renamed the Mortimer Rare Book Room in 1994 in honor of curator and teacher Ruth Mortimer, who herself graduated from Smith,[3] and served as the collection's steward from 1975 until her death in 1994.
[3] The repository was renamed the Mortimer Rare Book Collection when it became a part of Smith College Special Collections, a then-newly formed entity at Smith.
The MRBC has extensive holdings of both printed books and literary manuscripts, including cuneiform tables, European and American herbals, modernist literature, artist's books, and book historical artifacts and examples.
Among the Collection’s eighty incunables (books printed before 1501) is the Epistole devotissime of St. Catherine of Siena (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1500), acquired in 1987 as Smith College Libraries' millionth volume.