LibGuides: Research Smarter: Information Literacy Skills: Images

Finding Images

For research, images need context and information about their creation to reuse them ethically. Where you locate images can help you with both. Here are a few places to try.

AP Images
Billed as "the world’s largest collections of historical and contemporary photographs" from the Associated Press. Images cover topics ranging from breaking news and sports to business, entertainment, weather, fashion, travel, royalty-free, rights-managed, microstock and more.

Artstor Digital Library This link opens in a new window
A nonprofit resource that provides more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with an accessible suite of software tools for teaching and research. Our community-built collections comprise contributions from outstanding international museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates.

Calisphere
The digital library collections of the University of California.
Europeana Photography
Europeana works with thousands of European archives, libraries and museums to share cultural heritage for enjoyment, education and research.
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This website gives you access to millions of books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for. Register for a Europeana account today so that you can save liked items and create your own galleries.

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To find out about Europeana's technical infrastructure, and how Europeana empowers the cultural heritage sector in its digital transformation, visit our sister site for professionals, Europeana Pro.
Getty Images: Editorial
Photographs of current events and world happenings.
Harvard Digital Collections
Harvard Digital Collections provides free, public access to more than 6 million objects digitized from our collections - from ancient art to modern manuscripts and audio visual materials.
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While much of Harvard Library's digital content is available only to Harvard affiliates, Harvard Digital Collections provides free, public access to over six million digital objects - from ancient art to modern manuscripts and even audio/visual material.

Using records from our LibraryCloud API, this platform brings together information from multiple library catalogs and data sources, alongside hi-resolution digital images allowing users to pan, zoom, and compare multiple images side-by-side.

This work was made possible, in part, by funds from the Library's Innovation Grant program.
J. Paul Getty Museum Photography Collection
Photographs held by the Getty. The collection is particularly rich in works dating from the time of photography’s invention in England and France in the late 1830s and early 1840s.
Library of Congress Images
Images held in the Library of Congress collection.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Prints, photographs and more from the New York Public Library collection.
Time Photography
Current event photographs since 1923.

Scholarly Information and Journal Articles about Photography

From the history of photography to famous photographers and types of photography to different time periods, find academic, college-level articles and more

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Short ebook articles like college-approved Wikipedia (try the Mind Map)
Gale Power Search This link opens in a new window
Images, video, audio, news, books, magazines and academic journals (try the Topic Finder)
Art Full Text This link opens in a new window
Scholarly articles from more than 300 periodicals dating back to 1995
Arts & Humanities Database This link opens in a new window
Scholarly peer-reviewed journals and selected trade and consumer titles

Finding Artworks

Crystal Bridges eMuseum
Explore the digital collection of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met’s online collection includes more than 375,000 hi-res images of public-domain works from the collection.
Smithsonian: Explore Art & Design
Explore the Smithsonian’s art collection.
The Louvre
Selected works from the Paris, France museum.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Browse or search the collection.
J. Paul Getty Museum
Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art from the Neolithic to Late Antiquity; European art—including illuminated manuscripts, paintings, drawings, sculpture, and decorative arts—from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century; and international photography from its inception to the present day.
Google Arts and Culture
Explore collections from around the world with Google Arts & Culture, created by Google Cultural Institute.

Artstor Digital Library This link opens in a new window
A nonprofit resource that provides more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with an accessible suite of software tools for teaching and research. Our community-built collections comprise contributions from outstanding international museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates.

Current Events Photographs

AP Images
Billed as "the world’s largest collections of historical and contemporary photographs" from the Associated Press. Images cover topics ranging from breaking news and sports to business, entertainment, weather, fashion, travel, royalty-free, rights-managed, microstock and more.
Getty Images: Editorial
Photographs of current events and world happenings.
Time
Time has been reporting current events since 1923. See also their Photography section.

Research Smarter: Information Literacy Skills: Images

Ethically Reusing Images

Finding Images

Scholarly Information and Journal Articles about Photography

Finding Artworks

Current Events Photographs