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Vassar College History

Vassar College Digital Library

Vassar College's Digital Library digitizes, makes available, and preserves materials important to the library and Vassar College. We create collections using both existing digital material and by converting analog materials, including slides, print photographs, audio, and text.

Wolven Glass Plate Negative Collection
Includes more than 3,500 glass plate negatives created by photographer Edmund Wolven. Most of the images are of Vassar College people, events, buildings and grounds, but there is a subset that relates to other local educational institutions and Poughkeepsie. Wolven, born in Poughkeepsie in 1876, worked for many schools and colleges in the area. He began taking photos for Vassar College in the late 1890s, and became the official college photographer between approximately 1900 and 1910. The latest photographs in this collection are from the 1940s.
Vassar College Early Images
Consists of materials relating to the early history of Vassar College, from its founding in 1861 to the early years of the 20th century. The images provide visual documentation of Raymond Avenue, college buildings and buildings relating to Matthew Vassar, class groups, faculty, presidents, students, trustees, Vassar Lake, and Matthew Vassar and his relatives.
Matthew Vassar Papers
Digitized version of Series I of the Matthew Vassar Papers. The rest of the collection is available in Archives & Special Collections
Vassar College Student Diaries
Provides access to more than fifty diaries from Vassar students from the nineteenth century. The diaries concern life on campus, other students, classes, relationships with their professors, vacations, family news, and other subjects; some volumes have short entries on daily activities while others have longer, more reflective entries.
Vassar College Student Letters
Contains letters from Vassar students primarily during the nineteenth century. The letters were written by students to family, friends, and Vassar faculty, with some letters received by students from family and friends, concerning life at Vassar, their studies, social events, and family affairs.
Vassar College Newspaper Archives
Includes the Miscellany Monthly (1872-1915), Miscellany News (1914-2011), Vassar Quarterly (1916-2015), Vassar Chronicle (1944-1978), Unscrewed (1978-1989), Vassar Spectator (1983-1993), Womanspeak (1987-1992), and Left of Center (1988-1992).

VC Newspapers: Using the Newspaper Archive

Browse by Date

If you know a particular era or specific date, you can browse issues using the calendar option located on the home page.

Basic Search

You can perform a simple search by typing keywords in the search box on the home page and clicking "Search". The search engine will return results that include all of your search terms.

You can search for an exact phrase by placing quotation marks around your search terms, for example "Julia Lathrop".

The "Refine search" area gives you a number of options to limit your search results, such as by date or by a particular publication.

Advanced search

Conduct a simple search from the home page, then choose, the Advanced Search tab. This allows you to limit your search results from the start of your search by one or more publications and/or a date range.

It also allows you to search within titles only, choose the number of search results you want displayed on each page, and choose whether you would like preview images displayed with your search results.

More search strategy tips are available More help pop-up.

Printing

Articles can be printed directly from your web browser, after selecting the article and clicking the "Clip this article" link.

If available, PDF versions of issues and pages can be downloaded for printing.