Image Searching, and Image Collections on the Web
Revised 7/15/08
Prepared by Naomi Schwer Bricker, Reference Librarian; Adjunct Assistant Professor

The resources on these pages guide you to collections of images or search engines that will help you find specific images on web pages. 

All applicable copyright restrictions still apply; see http://www.copyright.gov (U.S. Copyright Office) or http://www.benedict.com (The Copyright Website) for more information. Note that “copyright-free” indicated on some sites does not necessarily mean that there is no fee for the use of the images. Check the details on each site for updated use information and charges.
Plagiarism issues also arise when you use images found on the web without properly citing the source.

Current FIT students and employees have access (FIT Username & Password required) to Digital Library databases.

There are several image collection databases listed and described there, including ARTStor, ClipArt.com [School Edition],  Oxford Art Online, and the locally-produced FITDIL: FIT Digital Image Library. 
 

Image Collections

AICT: Art Images for College Teaching   
http://arthist.cla.umn.edu/aict/html
“Royalty free” images “licensed for non-profit use” covering various periods of art history.  Also relates the images to chapters in older (2002 and earlier) editions of textbooks such as Gardner’s Art through the Ages and Janson’s History of Art.

American Memory
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem
American history and popular culture collections of photography, graphics, documents and audio-visual from the Library of Congress. Searchable, or can be browsed by topic, time period, format, or geographic region.

Mark Harden’s Artchive 
http://www.artchive.com/core.html
A gallery of scanned images of over 200 major artists' works, arranged alphabetically by name or listed by art movement. Also has changing ‘gallery exhibits’, excerpts of art criticism, and good discussion on copyright, ‘fair use’ and ‘public domain’ issues. Note that there may be popup ads or additional ad screens that you need to view before you can access the free content.

NYPL Digital Library
http://www.nypl.org/digital
The New York Public Library's gateway to its digital image collections. Includes interesting online exhibitions and two large subcollections:
NYPL Digital  Gallery http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital
Over 300.000 digitized images of items from the New York Public Library's Research Libraries collections, including photographs, manuscripts, maps and ephemera. Images are viewable in various resolutions and there are options for enlargement and zooming in and out.
NYPL Picture Collection Online  http://digital.nypl.org/mmpco
Digitized version of the out-of-copyright material (mostly published prior to 1923) from the New York Public Library’s (Mid-Manhattan branch) extensive picture file collection, “the largest of its kind in any public library system.” Contains over 30,000 images, strong in areas of costume, and New York and American history.

Visual Collections: Images of Art history and culture 
http://www.davidrumsey.com/collections/index.html
Portal to museum, university, and private image collections online. Not searchable by keyword across the various sites unless you install Insight Java Client or Insight Browser software.

Pics4Learning  
http://pics.tech4learning.com/index.php
Small database of basic images--animals, plants, people, textures, etc., uploaded by a variety of photographers (pro and amateur) as "copyright friendly images for use by students and teachers in an educational setting" Easy browsing, but search feature doesn't always generate exact results; Use advance search and read search tips for best results. Results can be sorted by "date, name, photographer, size, width height and popularity"

U.S. Government Photos and Multimedia
http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml
Government agency photographs and logos. Mostly public domain items. Obviously strong in US history, geography, past and present political figures. Also includes audio and video files.

Web Clip Art 
http://webclipart.about.com
Directory of images including fonts, backgrounds & animation. Often designed for use on web pages or in desktop publishing rather than for printing.
 

Fee-Based Picture Collections

These websites contain large searchable collections of images. Information on any fees for one-time use as well as reproduction rights are described at each site

Corbis
http://www.corbis.com

Getty Images
http://www.gettyimages.com

Picture Contact
http://www.picturecontact.com

Time Life Pictures
http://www.timelifepictures.com 
 

Image Collection Links

Art Links   
http://www.wadsworth.com/art_d/templates/stripped_features/links/index.html
Art history image resources, arranged by time period. No-frills web page, from the publisher of the classic textbook "Gardner's Art Through the Ages". Also links to:
Guide to Research: Harcourt's Quick Guide to Researching Art History Using the Internet  at
http://www.wadsworth.com/art_d/templates/stripped_features/research/index.html   and
Tips on Becoming a Successful Student (including section on "Writing a Museum Paper") at
http://www.wadsworth.com/art_d/templates/stripped_features/tips/index.html

BUBL LINK Internet Resources by Type: Image collections  
http://bubl.ac.uk/link/types/images.htm
A miscellany of online sources, chosen by academic librarians in the UK.  Information about each site notes site’s ‘author’, country of origin (mostly UK or US), and Dewey Decimal classification number (indicating subject). When using the Search feature try searching by "description" rather than "subject terms" as expected results do not always come up.

Digital Librarian: Images 
http://www.digital-librarian.com/images.html
Huge collection of links to image collections, especially strong on topics such as U.S. history, art, and architecture.

Finding Images Online
http://www.berinsteinresearch.com/fiolinks.htm
Supplement to article about image searching. Includes links to hundreds of subject-specific sites.

Image Collections and Online Art
http://www.umich.edu/~hartspc/histart/mother/images.html
Arranged by loose categories such as “Africa & Diaspora” , “Classical World of the Mediterranean”, “Photography” and “Collections, Galleries & Sources”. Part of the larger Mother of all Art and Art History Links site ( http://www.art-design.umich.edu/mother ), which has links to individual museums, art schools, and organizations, online art exhibits, and research resources (see "Images" subsection at
http://art-design.umich.edu/mother/vrref.html )

Image Finder
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/ImageFinder
Starting point for searching several online image collections, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, newspaper archives, and various regional and foreign collections. Also “SUNSITE Digital Collections” ( http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Collections).

Locating Public Domain Images  
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/internetresourcestopic.htm  (then choose article title from alphabetical list)
Article written by Lorrie A. Knight for College & Research Library News. Includes sections on “Thematic image collections” "Academic sites” “Government sites” and general “Image archives” that allow copyright-free use.

MIT: Rotch Visual Collections: Exploring Image Collections on the Internet
http://libraries.mit.edu/rvc/image-collections/index.html
“An overview of resources for images - from archaeology, architecture and art to urban design” . Also discusses technical and copyright issues related to searching for, and using, online images.

PhotoGraphic Libraries
http://www.photographiclibraries.com
Visual links and directory information, subdivided by categories such as “Fashion Photographers” , “Fine Art” and “Stars and Celebrities”.

Most general search and metasearch engines have image searching capabilities, usually using pull-down menus or tabs across the top of the home screen indicating ‘pictures’, ‘images’, or ‘multimedia’ . If you do not see such an option, look for an “advanced search” link.

You can also try specifying the type of image file you are looking for (e.g. .jpg , or gif) in the text of your search (e.g. ‘rainbow filetype:jpg’). Note that search engines generally rely on the name attached to an image file in order to retrieve your image. For example, a search for 'eagle' might net you a picture of a bird, a picture of a high school football team player, or a logo with the word 'eagle’ in it. A search engine cannot actually look for an eagle, only things labeled 'eagle'. 

Note that when you use the specific image search functions, you often will get a page of thumbnail images as a result, rather than the typical search engine result of a list of websites and links.

For detailed comparison of features see:
“FAQ—Image Search Engines” 
"Image Search Engines"
“A Review of Image Search Engines”

These general or image-specific search engines have additional features that set them apart000912628

AlltheWeb.com: Advanced Pictures Search
http://www.alltheweb.com/advanced?c=img
Offers standard filetype as well as “image type” (color, greyscale or ‘line art’) and “background” (‘transparent, non-transparent’) options. Choose "Video" tab for advanced search of moving images. Owned by Yahoo, which also owns AltaVista Image Search.

AltaVista Image Search
http://www.altavista.com/image
Allows you to specify the type of image file using factors such as color vs. b & w, photo vs. graphic., and pixel size. Owned by Yahoo, which also owns AlltheWeb.com, searches AltaVista’s entire web index , ‘News’ sites and/or affiliates Corbis, "Autos" ("Yahoo Autos") or "Movies" ("Yahoo Movies"). Also “Video Search” at http://www.altavista.com/video

Ask.com Search Images
http://www.ask.com/images
Results often include options ("Related names",  "Narrow your search",  "Expand your search") for retrieving additional related images. Autocomplete suggests terms as you type, and page of results also contains brief factual information about the topic.

Ditto.com
http://www.ditto.com
One of the pioneers in image searching (and previously known as Arriba Vista), this site now offers only very basic searching, claiming to  use a unique “visual, rather than textual, mechanism”. Websites of Ditto’s “Visual Search partners” (such as Mamma http://www.mamma.com/?qtype=48 and MetaCrawler  http://www.metacrawler.com) offer additional interfaces with this product, with more search options.

Google Image Search
http://images.google.com
Basic keyword searching. Advanced search option allows you to combine standard Google search features (keyword or phrase searching, choice of domain, for example) with image size, file type, color / greyscale / B&W preferences.

Ithaki Image Meta Search Engine  
http://www.ithaki.net/images
No-frills simultaneous search of “Cydral, Google Image Search, YahooImages, Dino, Alltheweb and Picsearch”. No thumbnails or previews of images are shown.

Live Search: Images
http://www.live.com/images
Images can be easily dragged onto a "scratchpad" to create a working collection. You can choose images by size, designated small, medium, large or "my desktop size". Sliding bar lets you adjust how many thumbnails appear per page

Picsearch
http://www.picsearch.com
Advanced Search option allows user to specify size (by number of pixels), color vs. B/W, and still images vs. animation.

Pixsy
http://www.pixsy.com
Searches , news sites, YouTube, FlickR and other photo-sharing services. Best for popular culture items. Date displayed with thumbnail views may be date of original photograph, date posted online, or date found using search engines.

Yotophoto
http://yotophoto.com
Searches photos only, from public domain sources, Flickr, and other sites with many images "released under Creative Commons, GNU FDL or similar licenses". Thumbnail results indicate the actual size of image and the licensing coverage.

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