The Posner Center for Special Collections

About

The Posner Center is home to Carnegie Mellon University’s Special Collections. Part museum and part laboratory for the humanities, it is CMU’s destination for discovery, research, and hands-on engagement with the past. For information on scheduling a class visit or research appointment, please visit CMU Libraries Special Collections.

The Posner Center has been newly renovated and is now open to the campus community and the public. Read more about the Posner Center renovation.

Hours

During university holidays and periods when classes are not in session, the Posner Center operates by appointment only. Public open hours resume the first full week of each semester; pre-scheduled programs and public events may still occur during appointment-only periods.

Contact Posner Center Staff (posnercenter@cmu.edu) to schedule a research appointment or class visit.

Staff & Faculty

Special Collections partners with departments across CMU to integrate rare materials into teaching and research.

Upcoming Events

America250: The Constitution as Object (Constitution Day Symposium)

Thursday, September 17 | 4:45 – 6:00 p.m.
Registration required.

Register Here

As part of CMU's America250 programming and in partnership with the Dietrich College Humanities Center and the Law & Humanities Institute, participants will have the rare opportunity to view the Posner Center's copy of the US Bill of Rights — one of only five surviving copies of the first official printing. This session will explore the Bill of Rights not only as a foundational constitutional text, but also as a remarkably fragile historical artifact.

Open Stacks* - Eyes on the Sky

Wednesday, October 7 | 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.

For centuries, humans have looked up and tried to make sense of what they saw. Join Dr. Jay Apt, an astronaut and Carnegie Mellon professor emeritus, for “Spacewalking and What’s It Like Up There?”—a firsthand look at living and working in space. Rare books tracing this enduring effort will also be on view, including Abū Maʿshar’s 1489 astrological treatise and Hevelius’s breathtaking lunar atlas.

Open Stacks* - Bodies of Horror

Wednesday, October 28 | 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.

Step inside the Posner Center for an evening at the dark edge of human knowledge. Explore rare books that have terrified, fascinated, and unsettled readers for centuries — from prophecy and witchcraft to anatomical curiosities, macabre woodcuts, and visions of the grotesque.

Open Stacks* - Sacred Pages: Scripture in the Abrahamic Traditions

Wednesday, November 11 | 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.

From medieval Books of Hours to illuminated Haggadahs and early printed Bibles and Qur'ans, explore how religious communities across time have copied, printed, and decorated the words they held most holy.

Posner Lecture in the History of Science & Technology - Blaise Agüera y Arcas

Thursday, December 3 | 6:00 p.m.

Google CTO, AI researcher, and author Blaise Agüera y Arcas will deliver the inaugural Posner Lecture in the History of Science & Technology, drawing on his recent book What Is Intelligence? (MIT Press, 2025) to explore the conceptual origins and future of AI.

* Open Stacks is a series of pop-up exhibitions and public programs that bring rare books, manuscripts, and early technologies out of the vault and into view. Each event offers a thematically focused look at objects from Carnegie Mellon’s Special Collections and invites conversations about the materiality, histories, and futures of science, technology, literature, and the book. All are welcome. Snacks & fun provided.

Current Exhibits

Rare Books & Ancestral Machines

Rare Books & Ancestral Machines features more than thirty books and objects from the Center’s holdings. Many of these materials are on view for the first time. The exhibition inaugurates the newly renovated Center, surveying its collections and tracing more than four centuries of scientific inquiry and learning. Read more.