September 15th - November 25th, 2026 in the Lally Reading Room
American Horror Stories explores some of Audubon's creatures featured in horror novels, classic poems, and folklore. From New England's Hill House to the streets of New Orleans to northern Alberta, Audubon's morbid curiosities will continue to haunt our nightmares and our bookshelves.

Fall Exhibit 2026 in Beuth Atrium
This is a combination of materials showcase and research. This exhibit focuses on the connection between the humanities and stem with the work of paper and book conservation.

Unveiled for permanent display on May 14th, 2026 in Wold, Union College campus.
Union College’s Stone Lion is a cultural artifact that is the product of millennia of artistic development and sustained cultural exchange across Eurasia through the Silk Roads, a vast network of land and sea trade routes that began around the 2nd century BCE, during China’s Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) and continued through the mid-15th century.

May 14th - July 31st, 2026 in the Beuth Atrium
We invite you to browse some of the treasures from this Government Documents exhibit!

Spring to Summer 2026 in the Lally Reading Room
A selection of Audubons curated by Tracy Chen.

March 29th - July 31st, 2026 in the Beuth Atrium
Explore the Revolution at Schaffer Library.

March 29th - June 5th, 2026 in the Beuth Atrium.
Archival photographs of Crew/Rowing Team at Union College from Special Collections.

March 6th - April 2026 in the Beuth Atrium

September 3rd - November 21st, 2025 in the Beuth Atrium.
Open for Research celebrates Union's past and present approach to integrating STEM and Liberal Arts education.

September 25th - November 23, 2025 in the Lally Reading Room.
Birds I've Eaten showcases four prints of Audubon's work, with two prints being commonly consumed bird species that we eat in our day-to-day life, and the other two showcasing bizarre birds Audubon tasted and his notes on them

January 1st - March 25th, 2025 in the Beuth Atrium.
Over the course of 3 class sessions this fall term, students in Joyce Madancy’s HST-279 “Walls (and Fences)” class explored the history of the Terrace Wall, the fences around campus, and the Payne Gate.

January 1st - March 25th, 2025 in the Lally Reading Room.
Birds of the Haudenosaunee offers an immersive exploration of the birds central to the Iroquois Confederacy's cultural and spiritual heritage. It highlights the bald eagle, blue heron, hawk, and snipe.

May 1st - June 31th, 2025 in the Lally Reading Room.
Special Collections & Archives and Schaffer Library proudly present “’Determined to Compete and Win:’ 50 Years of Women's Athletics at Union College," an exhibit commemorating a half-century of women's athletics at Union. This exhibition reflects on fifty years of dedication, triumph, and transformative progress and serves as a vibrant testament to the remarkable journey of female athletes at Union College.

August 1st - November 29th, 2024 in the Beuth Atrium.
Travel has not always been safe and Schenectady was not always an easy place to get to. This exhibit looks at the way transportation has changed since 1795 and what it took to navigate around New York and the Capital Region.

April 19th - April 26th, 2024 located on the left of the doors into Lally Reading Room.
Featuring material from Union College's Special Collections and Archives department.

April 15th - June 17th, 2024 in the Beuth Atrium
This exhibition showcases various scrapbooks, spanning from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, produced by Union students, family members, clubs and organizations, and staff and faculty.

March 1st - April 1st, 2024 in the Beuth Atrium
“A Mutual Need for Friendship in New Surroundings”: The Union College Student Wives Association and Childcare Center, 1965-1986. This exhibition features materials from two collections in Union’s archives: the Student Wives Association of Union College and the Childcare Center Reunion Collection.

January 3rd - March 25th, 2024 in the Lally Reading Room
This exhibit features four prints selected by members of Schaffer Library's instruction team. Union's double elephant folio prints continue to serve this purpose one hundred eighty years later.

January 3rd - March 25th, 2024 in the Lally Reading Room
Dogs have shared our campus since the earliest days of Union College. This exhibit includes a brief history of Union College canines.

October 11th - November 22nd, 2023 in the Lally Reading Room
This exhibition seeks to highlight the stories and experiences of LGBTQ+ people at Union College, using the archival material available at Special Collections and Archives. Featuring materials identified in the 2023 Ruth Anne Evans Research Fellowship, the goal is to uncover and bring to light queer history at Union that has either been buried or has yet to be recognized as queer.

September 1st - November 22nd, 2023 in the Lally Reading Room
This exhibit illustrates the extraordinary life of Union College alumnus John Bigelow (1817-1911, UC 1835) who played a pivotal role in shaping the Reconstruction Era, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era through his roles as an American author, diplomat, lawyer, philanthropist, and distinguished man of letters.

Digital Exhibit: August 17, 2023
This exhibition seeks to highlight the stories and experiences of LGBTQ+ people at Union College, using the archival material available at Special Collections and Archives. Featuring materials identified in the 2023 Ruth Anne Evans Research Fellowship, the goal is to uncover and bring to light queer history at Union that has either been buried or has yet to be recognized as queer.

Digital Exhibit: May 4th, 2023
This digital exhibit aims to delight audiences by showcasing various trips Bigelow and his family made between 1850 and 1886. Through his letters, family diaries, and other collection materials from the John Bigelow papers (SCA-0022), visitors can accompany Bigelow around Europe and the Caribbean to learn more about global travel during the nineteenth century.

March 23rd - June 9th, 2023 in Beuth Atrium.
The Osmond D. Putnam photographs (ARL-081) provide a glimpse into the close of the 19th century as the Adirondacks moved from an isolated wilderness to a permanently settled part of the state. The communities in which Putnam took photographs were not the great camps and high peaks of the seasonal tourist. Rather, they were the remote valleys where settlers labored to eke out a hard-scrabble existence from the land around them.

January 25th - March 24th, 2023 in the Lally Reading Room
Union College and Schenectady have played host to countless stories over the campus’s centuries-long history. Since the invention of photography, members of the campus community have documented this history and their stories visually. Many such photographs are housed in the Picture File (SCA-1206), a collection of thousands of images preserved in the Special Collections and Archives department.

January 9th - March 24th, 2023 in the Lally Reading Room
Created from rare books found in the department of Special Collections and Archives, "Sex, Religion, and Politics: The Heterogeneous Library of John Bigelow" is a single case exhibit that presents a diverse assortment of books from the personal library of John Bigelow (1817-1911, UC 1835). The books on display range from 1700 to 1903, showcase eight different languages, and tell a story about how his personal and professional reading choices were partly responsible for shaping his open-mindedness and forward-thinking decision making.

January 9th - March 24th, 2023 in the Lally Reading Room
Winter Term 2023 exhibit featuring four owl prints from Union’s collection of double elephant folio Birds of America by John James Audubon

September 5th - December 31st, 2022 in the Lally Reading Room
This exhibit features selections from John James Audubon’s Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size watercolors reproduced from hand-engraved plates and printed between 1827 and 1838. Eliphalet Nott acquired Union College’s copy of Birds of America directly from Audubon himself in 1844. Originally bound in four volumes, our copy underwent significant conservation treatment in 2006 and the engravings are now housed individually, making for easier and safer display.

Digital exhibit and transcription site:
The diaries of John Bigelow's wife, Jane Tunis Poultney Bigelow, make up the majority of the Diaries and Journals series. Just as respected and loved as her husband, Jane was an important figure in the New York literary and social scene. Her diaries detail their life and travels.

May 26th - June 10th, 2022 in Beuth Atrium.
The James Joyce Collection at Union College is housed in Schaffer Library's Special Collections and Archives. A small, yet rich collection of rare editions and ephemera, the James Joyce Collection offers researchers unique items related to international Bloomsday events, first and rare editions, and Joycean ephemera.

August 12th - March 1st, 2022 in the Lally Reading Room
Night of the Living Radio: WRUC Past and Present celebrates the 101st anniversary of WRUC. The exhibit showcases materials from the WRUC collection and includes vinyl records, radio equipment, ephemera, and recordings of broadcasts that visitors may listen to on their phones.

Digital Exhibit: August 6th, 2020
This exhibit was inspired by the 50 year anniversary of coeducation and celebrates the impact women have made throughout the course of Union's history. Women have long been involved in the history of this institution, influencing its structure through contributions to areas such as labor, finances, and educational developments, among others.

Digital Exhibit: July 13th, 2020
This website provides a general overview of the history of engineering at Union College and will hopefully serve as inspiration for those interested in learning more about this storied history.

Digital Exhibit: March 18th, 2020
The goal of the exhibit is to recognize the sisterhood of students whose accomplishments have helped shaped Union’s success. With courage and commitment, these women and others, alongside students of color, helped build the foundation for a more diverse student body, faculty and leadership at Union College. Today, women represent 47 percent of enrolled students.

March 11th - May 11th, 2020 in the Lally Reading Room
This exhibit, using Union College as a case study, examines the importance of protests on college campuses during this time period. By shedding light on the various protests at Union during these years, current student visitors will be able to compare and contrast their experiences. What made this era unique? What are campus protests like today?

August 12th - November 15th, 2019 in the Lally Reading Room
In the winter of 2017, a lock of George Washington's hair was discovered in the stacks of the Special Collections Department at Union College, triggering an international media storm. The lock of hair was found in a small envelope that was tucked inside a rare book entitled Gaine's Universal Register (1793).

May 24th - June 14, 2019 in the Lally Reading Room
Exhibit materials feature a summary of campus issues, notably the debate and decision to admit women students, beginning in the fall of 1970. Campus activities included entertainment venues that featured folksingers Judy Collins, Peter, Paul & Mary and Muhammad Ali’s visit to Union.

May 5th - May 16th, 2019 in the Lally Reading room.
Charles Proteus Steinmetz was a Union College Professor of Electrical Engineering, 1902-1913 and Professor of Electro-Physics (non-teaching) from 1913-1923

March 22nd - June 7th, 2019 in the Lally Reading Room
As part of Union College’s commitment to the celebration of Women’s History Month, we proudly tell the story of Katherine ‘Kay’ Flickinger Dockstader, an outdoors enthusiast, hiker, skier, amateur photographer, and former GE employee. Born in Schenectady in 1910, she was a world-wide traveler who had a lifelong fascination with the Adirondacks. As a member of the Schenectady Chapter of Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) as well as the YMCA/YWCA’s Otyokwa Club, she regularly took weekend hiking trips, often in the High Peaks.

February 22nd - May 2nd, 2019 in the Lally Reading Room
The Face of Change: Women at Union College” focuses on pioneers who played vital roles in the integration of women at the College. Urania Sheldon Nott, the third wife of Union president Eliphalet Nott, helped expand the view of women in education when she founded a private school “for young ladies” that started in Troy and moved to Schenectady.

Digital Exhibit: December 10th, 2018
This website showcases notable people whom have either graduated from Union College or have had a significant accomplishment in association with the college.

Digital Exhibit: December 5th, 2018
This website showcases themes and material available for further exploration in the John S. Apperson Jr. Papers and the Paul Schaefer Collection held at the Adirondack Research Library of the Kelly Adirondack Center at Union College in Schenectady, New York.

September 7th - December 14th, 2018 in the Beuth Atrium
As Union College welcomes Dr. David Harris as its nineteenth president, the Schaffer Library Special Collections and Archives presents “Two Centuries of Union College Presidents, 1795-2018.”

April 9th - September 21st, 2018 in the Lally Reading room.
This exhibit is a companion to a research website showcasing the works of author, artist, and printmaker William Blake to be released the Schaffer Library in late April, 2018. The development of the website would not have been possible with Union College's extensive collection of print facsimiles of Blake's illuminated books and commercial works.

January 22nd - March 25, 2018 in the Lally Reading Room
Union College’s Permanent Collection of art and artifacts includes an uncommon and exceptional collection of bronze weaponry and horse fittings from ancient Iran, generously donated by Professor Emeritus Carl George.

Digital Exhibit: January 5th, 2018
This exhibit is a companion to a research website showcasing the works of author, artist, and printmaker William Blake to be released the Schaffer Library in late April, 2018. The development of the website would not have been possible with Union College's extensive collection of print facsimiles of Blake's illuminated books and commercial works. The presentation online of an enhanced catalog of this collection and the digitization of selected images, undertaken to inspire and promote student creativity, forever intertwines the digital with the print.

October 20th - Spring, 2017 in the Beuth Atrium
This exhibit features Fitz Hugh Ludlow, A Nineteenth Century Writer and Adventurer best known to the Union College community for penning our Alma Mater, the Ode to Old Union.

October 5th - December 15th, 2017 in the Lally Reading Room
Reformation, Restoration and Romeyn presents objects that reflect the connections between Union College and the Reformation movement. The exhibit features four recently restored Bibles, including the family Bible of Dirck Romeyn, a Protestant minister and principal founder of Union College. Written in the Dutch vernacular, the Romeyn Bible is the direct result of the Reformation’s influence on making the gospels accessible to ordinary citizens.

February 2nd - September 30th, 2017 in the Lally Reading room.
The materials assembled in this exhibit introduce visitors to Afrofuturist musicians, authors and speculative artists, and retroactively designated Afrofuturists texts to challenge assumptions about the black experience. That is so say, the often racially coded Digital Divide is much narrower than once thought; there is a thriving Black cyberculture populated with Afropunks, Steamfunkers, Bleeks (black geeks) & Blerds (black nerds), and a very active black science fiction community who not only produce a vast body of speculative fiction but who also create comics, graphic fiction/nonfiction, film and speculative art.