News
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Celebrate International Open Access Week with DiSSCo!
Through a series of workshops during Vassar's celebration of International Open Access Week attendees will become acquainted with a variety of open access software.
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Building Static Websites: Why and How
Why build a static website? A static website is a website designed using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files (client-side languages). The same content is seen by all users and typically does not change often. Static sites are more environmentally friendly, requiring less server load. Static sites are not database driven like WordPress or Drupal. Static sites are easier to maintain. No databases or software to update. Static sites have fewer security issues. Static sites are faster for client-side loading. Static sites are easier to transfer and preserve. However, site-wide edits and the contribution of multiple authors can be difficult without serious planning and dedicated use of CSS for global design. …
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Sky’s the Limit for Drone Projects at Vassar
The Vassar Innovation Lab (VIL), Vassar’s makerspace located in the basement of College Center, has recently expanded its UAV (“drone”) capabilities to include three quadcopters capable of aerial photography, videography, and capturing images for photogrammetric processing (maps and 3D renderings). In Fall 2024, the VIL partnered with the Film department to host a drone photography and videography workshop at Sunset Lake. Students who attended that workshop later captured aerial photographs for a fine arts class project and recorded oblique aerial video of the athletic fields, which were edited into post-game highlight reels and posted on Instagram. In Fall 2024 and Spring 2025, drone mapping workshops were held at Vassar Barns…
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How to Manage a Successful and Sustainable Oral History Project
When starting an Oral History Project there are a few steps you should consider before beginning in order to ensure the long-term access of your project. A consultation with the Digital Scholarship and Technology Services Department (DS&T) is always a great first move towards success. DS&T can provide guidance on creating effective release forms, comprehensive metadata for online access, and workflows for digital preservation submission. In the past, a major pitfall of oral history projects has been the lack of release forms, making it difficult to publish oral histories in the Digital Library or elsewhere. In addition, the lack of data for each oral history session in a format that…
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2025 Spring Workshops Summary
Summary of Events 01/23 1:30 pm Intro to Excel & Data Literacy 01/31 11:00 am Stay Organized & Save Time with Zotero Citation Manager 02/04 11:00 am Overleaf Latex Series Part 1: Creating & Editing Equations 02/10 12:30 pm Intro to RISO Printing 02/12 3:00 pm Intro to the Vassar College Libraries Digital Library 02/14 1:00 pm Intro to Locating Data: Social Sciences Edition 02/19 3:00 pm Poster Design for Academia 02/20 10:00 am Intro to Illustrator for Laser Cutting 02/25 10:30 am Intro to ArcGIS Online and Story Maps Part 1 (with ENST 125) 02/26 3:30 pm Stay Organized & Save Time with Zotero Citation Manager 02/28 1:00 pm…
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DiSSCo Office Hours!
Every Monday 2-3 PM (EST) Via Zoom CLICK HERE TO ATTEND We can help you … Experiment with new ways of exploring the digital humanities Implement digital tools in the classroom Discuss funding opportunities for digital humanities / digital scholarship projects Write a grant proposal that includes digital scholarship services Include a data or preservation management plan in a grant Collaborate with other scholars on campus or beyond Get advice on managing your own collection of digital objects Find trustworthy digital tools to use in the classroom
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Spring 2023 Graphic Design Workshop Series
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Vassar GIS Day 2021
On November 17, 2021, Vassar College Earth Science and Geography Department and Hudson Valley Mappers (the Vassar College-based chapter of Youth Mappers) hosted an online GIS Day event featuring student, faculty, and staff speakers from various departments across campus including Environmental Studies, the Environmental Cooperative at Vassar Barns, Hudson Valley Mappers, Library Digital Scholarship & Technology Services, and Academic Computing Services. Presentations spanned a wide variety of topics, including: Spatial analysis of data from wildlife camera traps at Hubbard Brook experimental forest Local pollinator pathways and heat Island mapping projects Local tree canopy analysis and environmental justice mapping and other Hudson Valley Mappers projects Mapping tools for websites you can…
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Campus Resources for Building Websites
Need a website? Before you pay for hosting and support off-campus, let’s review the resources you have available to you as a member of the Vassar Community. We’ll provide an overview of Google Sites, pages.vassar.edu, and our new resource : vassarspaces.net – where we empower users to become sys admins and install their own apps (WordPress, Scalar, Omeka and more!). Led by Baynard Bailey of Academic Computing Services and Nicole Scalessa of Digital Scholarship and Technology Services.
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Brief Guide to Data Management Planning
UPDATE (2022-04-21): Vassar College is now a member of dmptool.org! Using your Vassar email you can login via SSO to your own dashboard to create DMP’s! The DMPTool is a free, open-source, online application that helps researchers create data management plans. The tool provides a click-through wizard for creating a DMP that complies with funder requirements. It also has direct links to funder websites, help text for answering questions, and data management best practices resources. ____ So, you are ready to start writing a grant and need a DMP? This brief guide will help you get started. Please note that, most times, a data management plan is project specific; many…
