Items

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  Union Women Oral History Project Interviews

  Transcripts and audio recordings of interviews with female Union College alumni conducted by students in History 16: Women in Modern America taught by Professor Andrea R. Foroughi in Spring of 2000. The interviews date from 2000-2002, and for this project students interviewed women who attended Union College in the earlier years of coeducation.
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  Lucille W. Brown and Stephen M. Berk Oral Histories of American Jews

  Lucille Brown began this project by sitting down with her own parents, Sol and Sonia Wernick, in her dining room on Highland Park Road in Schenectady, New York in 1970. She used a small cassette tape recorder and dove in with questions about the town they had left in the Ukraine in 1920, how and why they left and what life was like in their "old world". The project grew to include her brother Robert's in-laws, Fan and Jack Koenigsburg, and other members of the bungalow colony where the Koenigsburgs summered in the Catskills. The interviewees were all individuals who left Eastern Europe in the 1910s and 1920s. As her project grew in scope, LWB joined forces with Dr. Stephen Berk, a professor of Russian History at Union College where she was a librarian. Together they shaped the interview questions to get a clearer picture of life in the Pale of Settlement at the turbulent time following World War I and into the revolutionary period in Russia and Eastern Europe. Lucille Brown received funding for her project from Union College and from YIVO. She wrote several papers and gave talks on her work. Her collection of tapes and transcripts are held in the archives of both Union and YIVO. I am Lucille's daughter. During the time Mom was working on this project, I was in high school and college. I was present at the original interview with my grandparents and at many subsequent interviews. During the 70s, Lucille had me help her transcribe many of the taped interviews using her IBM Selectric typewriter. Since that time, the typed pages of the transcripts have sat in loose-leaf binders in my and my sisters' basements. The pages have started to dry out and get brittle but the stories they hold are compelling and deserve to be kept alive. It is my pleasure to revisit these interviews as I re-type them in a digital format. "Listening" to the stories, I see my grandparents and their friends and am transported to another time and place. I have taken the liberty of "cleaning up" the original transcripts - editing them for clarity and readability. I have also hyper-linked to explanatory geographical, historical, and non-English language references wherever possible and I have asked my sisters, cousins and descendants of the subjects to contribute pictures if they have them. Peggy Brown Brunswick, Maine 2019
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  Joseph Jacques Ramée Architectural Plans for Union College

  Joseph Jacques Ramée was a well-known architect and an itinerant designer in Europe, whose work could be seen in Belgium, Germany, and Denmark. The style which developed in his designs was a product of his nomadism: to the Neoclassicism of his training in France, he eclectically adopted elements from the architectural pallet of whatever locale he was working in. His tendency was to work with basic shapes and spare forms, suitable to versatile settings. In January 1813, Nott came into contact with Joseph Ramée, as the architect traveled south through New York State on his way to Philadelphia. Nott had a unique vision for higher education, coupling a modern and practical focus in the curriculum with the ideal of a college community as an extended family. To embody this vision, the campus itself had to be more than just a functional space. Nott apparently found a practical match for his ideas in Ramée, whom he contracted to draw plans for the Union campus. While Ramée’s vision is evident in the Union College of today, its influence was felt throughout the collegiate world in its time. The Union College plan became a model for what a campus could be and what kind of values a college could embody. This is a collection of Union College architectural plans which includes Schaffer Library and the Nott Memorial, drawn by Joseph Jacques Ramée in 1813.
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  Gender and Society Oral History Interviews

  This collection contains recordings and transcripts of oral history interviews conducted by students in the class titled Gender and Society taught by Professor Sharon Gmelch. The interviews were conducted in 1995, and interviewees consist of faculty members, wives of faculty members, staff and students in the Union College community regarding experiences before, during and after coeducation was adopted at Union College.
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  Sex, Religion, and Politics: The Heterogeneous Library of John Bigelow

  Curated 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.
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  Tales from the Picture File

  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.
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  100 Years of Ulysses: A Bloomsday Centenary Celebration

  The James Joyce collection at Union College is housed in Schaffer Library's Special Collections and Archives. A small, yet rich collection of rare materials, the collection offers researchers access to unique items related to international Bloomsday events, first and rare book editions, ephemera, and pamphlets from American and European libraries.
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  John James Audubon and Extinction

  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.
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  Big Z show track 2

  Historical recording of WRUC radio as apart of the Night of the Living Radio exhibition at Schaffer Library.
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  Night of the Living Radio: WRUC Past and Present

  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.
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  Pillars & Walls: Celebrating the contributions of women in the making of Union College

  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. These contributions have not always been at the forefront of the historical record, but they have been instrumental, visible or not.
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  175 Years of Engineering at Union College

  Union was the first liberal arts college to offer engineering in the United States. To celebrate 175 years of engineering education, the Special Collections and Archives Department of Schaffer Library has put together a digital exhibition which explores how the discipline of engineering influenced and shaped the College’s reputation as a partner in modern science and technology - from the 19th century to the present day. In addition, engineering alumni will be able to share their personal experiences to be kept for posterity.
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  50th Anniversary of Coeducation

  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.
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  Kay Flickinger Dockstader Papers, 1910-1995

  Katherine (Kay) Flickinger Dockstader (1910-1995) was a lifelong resident of the Schenectady, New York area who worked for General Electric. She was one of the first women to hike the 46 Adirondack High Peaks and was an active member of the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK), Mohawk Valley Hiking, and Otyokwa Clubs. Kay took extensive scenic photographs, detailing many of them with personal notes about the locations and participants. The images reflect Flickinger’s opinion that “up here, everything is beautiful!"
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  Mrs Perkins' Garden

  This website is an historic guide to Union College as it stood at the turn of the twentieth century. It is based upon information and stories gleaned from the recent donation to the College of a treasure trove of over 700 letters written between 1895 and 1904 by Anne Dunbar Potts Perkins, beloved campus resident, creator of Mrs. Perkins’ Garden, and wife of Maurice Perkins (Union College Professor of Chemistry, 1865-1901).
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  Blake@Union