Campus Resources
The Vassar College libraries have extensive holdings in all of the disciplines recognized in the Media Studies Program appropriate to an undergraduate curriculum. In addition to the broad and diverse range of primary materials of particular value to students in Media Studies, the libraries also offer a variety of electronic resources and services to support our curriculum in Media Studies. The libraries have a highly-trained staff of professionals—many of whom have participated in past Media Studies faculty seminar activities—knowledgeable in print and digital resources for research in a large number of academic fields, including Media Studies.
The Vassar campus has a wide range of computing facilities to support the Media Studies program, including the Library’s Media Cloisters, the Blodgett Anthropology Lab, the Computer and Information Services Multi Media Lab, and the Scientific Visualization Lab. These computing facilities each have highly-skilled professionals to provide training and support for both faculty and students.
The Media Cloisters, a state-of-the-art space for collaborative learning and the exploration of high-end media technologies, provides support for course development, class-based projects, and research in Media Studies. Located on the second floor of the Vassar College Main Library, the Media Cloisters is a state-of-the-art space for collaborative learning and the exploration of high-end technologies.
The Cloisters serves as the "public sphere" for networked interaction, the gathering place for students, professors, and librarians engaged in planning, evaluating, and reviewing the efforts of research and study utilizing the whole range of technologies of literacy. In this way, the Cloisters channels flows of research, learning and teaching between the increasingly networked world of the library and the intimacy and engagement of our classrooms and other campus spaces.
In the Cloisters, course development, class-based projects, and research necessarily become communal, interactive processes, engaging colleagues, students, information specialists, and a networked world of like-minded scholars, artists and media practitioners in active "programming" and explorations.