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About DISC Home Resources
Professional Organizations People and Programs
Opportunities Access

DISC Overview

The instructions on this page are intended to help you understand how the DISC website works.

As you can see from the menu at the top and bottom of every page, DISC is divided into six sections:

  • About DISC
  • Professional Organizations
  • Opportunities
  • Resources
  • People and Programs
  • Access

The "About DISC" section contains material describing the field of Disability Studies in the Humanities.

The "Access" section contains access guidelines for conferences, academic departments, websites.

The rest of the information on the DISC website is stored in a database. This database is divided into four main categories:

Professional Organizations Professional organizations, formal interest groups, and caucuses devoted to disability studies in the humanities.
Opportunities Calls for papers, employment opportunities, and funding sources.
Resources A collection of syllabi and a bibliography with full citations of books, articles, films, conference papers and proceedings, websites, newspaper articles, and exhibitions. Because of the diversity of material in the bibliography, we refer to each item in the bibliography as a "title."
People and Programs A directory of scholars and speakers and a directory of disability studies programs.

You can interact with this database in two main ways:

  1. You can search and browse through various kinds of information contained in the database.
  2. You can also contribute information to the database.

Searching and Browsing

Main page

On the main page, you can enter a word or phrase and select "go" to search simultaneously for that word or phrase in the "People," "Bibliography," and "Syllabi" sections of the website.

Category pages

The four main categories of the database correspond to four website sections: Professional Organizations, Opportunities, Resources, People and Programs. Each of these pages allows you to search and browse through that particular portion of the database.

Professional Organizations
Because the number of professional organizations is not large, it was not thought necessary to provide searchability functions with this data. Instead, you are presented with a link reading "LIST ORGANIZATIONS" towards the bottom of this page. Following that link will take you to the list.

Opportunities
As with the Professional Organizations page, the records here are presented as a list. You can choose to list the calls for papers, the employment opportunities, or the funding sources. Each item in each of these lists has a deadline attached to it, and the database will only display those items whose deadlines have not passed.

Resources
This section of the database has the largest amount of information. You have two choices on this page: you can search the bibliography, or you can search the syllabi.

Search the Bibliography
An image of the search screen for the bibliography.
  1. Search by Work or Author:
    • Enter a word or phrase in the search box of your choice. Search either by the title of the work or the name of the author.
    • Click on the "Submit" button.
  2. Search by Category:
    • Searches may be based on three categories: Type of impairment, Period, or Geographic Region.
    • Select either everything within the category or any of the other topic within the dropdown menu. The default is to search for everything within the category.
    • At this time, you may not combine multiple searches to narrow your field of results.
    • Click on the "Submit" button.

Search the Syllabi
An image of the search screen for the syllabi bank.
  1. Search by Course:
    • Enter a word or phrase in the search box.
    • Click on the "Submit" button.
  2. Search by Type of Course:
    • Courses are distinguished by Discipline, Level (undergraduate or graduate), and Focus.
    • Select either everything within the category or any of the other topic within the dropdown menu. The default is to search for everything within the category.
    • Click on the "Submit" button.

People and Programs
Here you can either search the directory of scholars and speakers, or you can search the directory of disability studies programs.

Search for People
An image of the search screen for the directory of people.

  1. Search by Name or Specialty:
    • Enter a word or phrase in the search box.
    • Click on the "Submit" button.
  2. Search by Discipline:
    • Select either everything within the category or any of the other topic within the dropdown menu. The default is to search for everything within the category.
    • Click on the "Submit" button.

List the Programs
Because the number of programs is not large, it was not thought necessary to provide searchability functions with this data. Instead, you are presented with a link reading "LIST PROGRAMS" towards the bottom of this page. Following that link will take you to the list.

Contributing Information

DISC users are invited to contribute information to the DISC database: entries for books, articles, syllabi, calls for papers, etc. In order to submit information, you must first get a DISC user account.

Getting an account

Choose "Sign in" from the DISC main page. On the next page, click on the "Not yet a registered user? Sign up here." link. Fill out the form that appears next.

  • For your user id, use your email address.
  • For your password, you are advised to choose something that will be easy to remember, but that contains a combination of letters and numbers.
  • It's okay to leave some fields blank if you like.

Entering information

Once you have your account, you can sign in from the main page by choosing the "Sign in" link. In the page that appears next, enter your user id and password, and click on "Sign in."

Entering information related to you
After you sign in, you should see a table that looks something like this:

An image of the table you get when you first log in.

By clicking on the "Add New" links next to one of the categories, you can use this interface to enter information concerning ...

  • ... any titles (articles, books, films, websites, etc.) of which you are the creator.
  • ... any organizations for which you are the contact person.
  • ... any programs for which you are the contact person.
  • ... any syllabi for courses you've taught.
  • ... any opportunities (calls for papers, funding sources) for which you are the contact person.

Editing or deleting information related to you
Once you've entered this information, you are free to edit or delete it as you like.

An image of the table you get when you first log in; a book title, an organization, a program, a syllabus, and an opportunity are now included in the table. To the right of each of these items are two links: delete and update.

Just click on "DELETE" to the right of an item to delete it from the database. Similarly, just click on "UPDATE" to the right of an item in order to make changes to that item.

Entering information related to someone else
To suggest additions or changes to the database of information related to someone other than yourself, use the links on the left-hand side of the page:

An image of the links that appear on the lefthand side of the page.

Clicking on the links under "ADD NEW" will take you to forms like the ones you are taken to when you click on the "Add New" links described in the previous section.

Editing or deleting information related to someone else
Once you've entered this information, you will not be able to edit or delete it as you like. Instead, you can use the links under "CHANGE" to make a suggestion to the DISC administrators.

Clicking on the links under "CHANGE" will take you to an email form, by means of which you can send a message to the DISC administrators suggesting that information be changed or deleted.