ARCHES is Union College's Academic Repository for Cultural Heritage, Education, and Scholarship. 

What can I find in ARCHES?

The materials in ARCHES are wide ranging. It includes archival materials like letters, diaries, and scrapbooks; historical information produced at Union like oral histories; educational and research work like the Mohawk Watershed Symposium; and digital scholarship work produced by students in partnership with the library. These materials are one-of-a-kind items that provide the basis for many research and scholarship projects.

What is a repository?

Though there are many ways to describe it, we consider a repository to be a set of features and functions that allow us to store digital objects, metadata (information about the object), and relationships between objects all in one place; search for them with sophisticated searching techniques; and showcase them in a variety of ways.

What software runs ARCHES?

ARCHES uses Archipelago, an open-source digital repository and access system. Schaffer Library works in partnership with our library colleagues at METRO, the Metropolitan New York Library Research Council, to create and sustain Union College's repository.

What people make ARCHES work?

ARCHES is a collaboration between many departments at Schaffer Library, particularly Content & Digital Library Systems and Special Collections & Archives. It is, however, a project that everyone in the library has contributed to in some way. Special thanks to Jennifer Byrd, Corinne Chatnik, Rebecca Fried, Matthew Golebiewski, Joseph Lueck, and Amanda Greenwood for their work. This team, led by Joanna DiPasquale and Sarah Schmidt, has provided the content and descriptions for these items.

I have more questions - whom can I contact?

Use our contact form to reach out to us