Schaffer Library houses some 550,000 volumes, including nearly all of the materials purchased to create the first College library in 1795. "First Purchase" books are housed in the library's Special Collections, which also contains many other treasures added to the library's collections over the years. Among the College's most prized possessions kept in Special Collections are an elephant folio edition of Audubon's Birds of America, which the College purchased directly from the artist; the original Ramée drawings for the campus; the Trianon editions of William Blake's works; the original College charter.
On-going additions to the general collections are in all contemporary information formats, including approximately 1500 current periodical subscriptions in print and many times that number in electronic full text. The library has also been a partial depository for federal government documents since 1901.
Schaffer Library operates on the open stack plan and houses a Current Periodicals Reading Room, individual study carrels, study tables, group study rooms, and Internet research workstations dispersed throughout the four floors of the building. The basement houses periodicals, government documents, audio CDs and books. The reference collection and Reference Desk are located on the first floor, where you will also find a large number of research workstations as well as the Circulation Desk, reserve information, microforms, current periodicals, newspapers and the Current Reading Area. The second floor contains the remaining books that circulate. The third floor houses the Administrative Office and Union' College's Special Collections and College Archives.
Library staff offer bibliographic instruction, on-line bibliographic retrieval services, and interlibrary loan and document delivery service. Professional reference service is offered during nearly all hours that the library is open.
