Contents

1. Franklin & Marshall Subscription Databases
2. General Topics
3. Art History, Architecture, and Photography
4. Special Collections/Artists' Books
5. Humanities, Social Sciences, and Area Studies
6. Science
7. Additional Guidance

Franklin & Marshall Subscription Databases

   

ARTstor

Digital library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, humanities, and the social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage them for scholarship and teaching purposes.

Bridgeman Art Library Archive

Online archive of the respected Bridgeman Art Library, founded in 1972 as an art reproduction library. Areas represented include fine art, design, antiques, maps, architecture, furniture, glass, ceramics, and anthropological artifacts from the collections of museums, art galleries, and artists.

Oxford Art Online Images

Search and browse for images contained within Oxford Art Online, and well as thousands more linked to authoritative third-party sources.

General Topics

       

Academic Commons, Image Project Resources

Multidisciplinary on-line image resources recommended by participants in a National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) project.

George Grantham Bain Collection

Photographs from one of the first American news picture agencies, the majority of which represent life in the New York of the 1900s-1920s. These high-quality, unrestricted-use images show working people, street scenes, celebrities, theater openings, cultural and social events, etc. A subset on Flickr (photos from 1910-1912) demonstrates an exceptional use of Flickr as a research resource.

Library of Congress American Memory

Free and open access to a ditigal record of American history and creativity. Materials chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas in the form of still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music.

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog

Catalog records and digital images representing a rich cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and other units of the Library (about 90% of the records are accompanied by one or more images). Library of Congress offers broad public access to these materials as a contribution to education and scholarship.

LIFE Photo Archive hosted by Google

Millions of historic photographs from the LIFE photo archive spanning the decades 1860s through 1970s. Images accessible by decade, keyword, and general categories such as People, Places, Events, Sports, Culture.

Mid-Manhattan Library Picture Collection Online

From New York Public Library's mid-town branch, a digital version of its renowned picture collection: more than 30,000 digitized images from books, magazines, and newspapers, as well as original photographs, prints, and postcards, mostly created before 1923. Searchable by subject and keyword.

New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Access to over 550,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, and printed ephemera.

Visual Information Access, Harvard University Libraries

Harvard's Web union catalog of visual resources representing the instituion's repositories (archives, museums, libraries, and other collections) and documenting "the arts, material culture, and social history." Some records allow access to larger-scale images that are adequare for teaching and research.

Wikimedia Commons

Search or browse this database of over 2,000,000 freely useable image (and other media) files organized by topic, location, and type.

WorldImages

California State University's IMAGE Project of over 60,000 images is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. Content may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes and can be located using many search techniques. Organized into portfolios (e.g. Cultural & Social Interactions) and further by subject (Middle Eastern Interpretations).

Art History, Architecture, and Photography

     

Art Images for College Teaching

Free-use-for-education resource of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture photographed on location by historian and visual resources curator, Allan Kohl. Hosted by the Department of Art History, University of Minnesota.

Artcyclopedia

Commercial Web site and search engine which provides the viewing of artists' works online through links to museum sites, image archives, and other online resources. Primary search orientation is by artist name.

Catena Digital Archive of Historic Gardens and Landscapes

Bard Graduate Center's typologically organized archive of digital images.

Chartres Cathedral Image Collection

A comprehensive digital look at the Cathedral of Chartres (French, 11-16th centuries) through more than 3,000 high-resolution images and accompanying descriptive text. Hosted by the Digital Research Library at the University of Pittsburgh.

Franklin & Marshall College Phillips Museum of Art

Public catalog of objects in the museum, including highlights of its exceptional collection of Pennsylvania Folk Art.

Franklin & Marshall College Visual Resources Collection

A curated collection of curriculum-relevant images for teaching, study, and scholarship.

Getty Museum Collections

Digital access to the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Search or browse by artist name, object type or medium, or subject.

Great Buildings Picture Index

A gateway to architecture around the world and across history, documenting a thousand buildings and hundreds of leading architects with 3D models, photographic images, and architectural drawings. Searchable by building, architect, or place.

Photomuse

Resources for the study of photography at work in the world; a collaboration between George Eastman House and the International Center of Photography.

RIBApix

Images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the world's most extensive visual archive develoted to architecture. RIBApix covers world architecture of all periods together with related subjects such as interior design, landscape, topography, planning, construction, and the decorative arts. Many images also are of social documentary importance.

Smithsonian Archives of American Art Image Collections

More than 6,000 photographs of artists and art-world figures, letters, sketches and sketchbooks, diaries, printed materials, ephemera, and other documents from the Archives' collections.

Textile Museum of Canada Collection Online

Research tool of images and descriptions relating to thousands of works in the museum's permanent collection. They represent nearly 2,000 years of history and cultural traditions from over 200 countries and regions around the world.

Victoria and Albert Museum Collections

Over 43,000 images of objects from the V&A's collections of ceramics, fashion, furniture, glass, metalwork, paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture, and textiles.

Visual Arts Data Service Online Resource for Visual Arts

Portfolio of 42 separate visual arts collections especially strong in fashion, design, material culture, furniture, craft, and political posters and prints. Based at the University College for the Creative Arts, UK.

Web Gallery of Art

Virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 12th to mid-19th centuries. A private initiative with impressive endorsements.

Special Collections/Artists Books

     

Digital Library of Illuminated Manuscripts

Illuminated manuscripts digitized page-by-page. Includes Franklin & Marshall's mid-15th century South Netherlands Book of Hours (Spec. Coll. BX2080 .H39 1450), as well as selections from Lehigh, Penn State, and Villanova Universities.

Franklin & Marshall College Library Special Collections

Digital presentation of objects from the library's German American Imprints. Choose the links for Pennsylvania German Broadsides and Pennsylvania German Fraktur to view two notable collections.

Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection

Visual record of materials in the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, that have been acquired over the course of the last ten years.

Otis Artists' Book Collection

Approximately 8,000 images of 2,000 books in the collection of the library of Otis College of Art & Design. Books can be viewed page-by-page, creating a valuable teaching and research resource for art historians, students, and artists. Collection includes works by important contemporary artists such as Ed Ruscha, Joseph Beuys and Vito Acconci.

University of Wisconsin Artists' Books Collection

Illustrated index to the Artists' Book collection, Kohler Art Library. Over 500 of the titles have one to four images to visually represent the structure and/or content of the book.

Humanities, Social Sciences, and Area Studies

   

Carthalia

Nearly 4,000 images of postcards and ephemera of theaters and concert halls around the world.

CDRI: Digital Resources for the Study of Religion

A joint project of the American Theological Library Association and the Association of Theological Schools offering access to digital images of woodcuts, photographs, slides, coins, maps, postcards, lithographs, and various forms of Christian art, architecture, and iconography.

Image Database to Enhance Asian Studies (IDEAS)

Interdisciplinary digital assets built around a "pan-Asian" theme. The product of a NITLE-sponsored (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education) effort to unify digitizing efforts at various liberal-arts colleges.

University of Texas at Austin Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

Online maps of both general and current interest. Collection categories include world geography, historical, thematic, and topographic.

Science

   

American Geological Institute, Earth Science World Image Bank

Earth science imagery provided by American Geological Institute.

American Society for Cell Biology Image and Video Library

A collection of peer-reviewed cell images, video clips, and digitized texts that illustrate the structure, function, and biology of the cell, the fundamental unit of life.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Link directs the viewer to a topical index. Additional ways to uncover content are a search page and an archive of every astronomy "picture of the day" going back to June, 1995.

Images from the History of Medicine

Nearly 60,000 images in the prints and photographs collection of the History of Medicine Division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Collection includes portraits, pictures of institutions, caricatures, genre scenes, and graphic art in a variety of media, illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine.

NASA Image Exchange

Search one or more of NASA's online image collections. Thumbnail-sized pictures returned in a search link to higher resolution images.

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Photo Library

Collections include weather, space, coastlines, marine species, ocean exploration, polar regions, and hundreds of Hurricane Katrina images recording damage extent.

Public Health Image Library

An organized, universal electronic gateway to pictures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for reference, teaching, and presentation use. Content is organized into hierarchical categories of people, places, and science, and is presented as photographs, illustrations, and multimedia files.

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Plants Database Image Gallery

More than 40,000 photographs and line drawings of United States plants.

Additional Guidance

Technical Advisory Service for Images, "Advice - Finding and Using Digital Images"

Library of Congress, "How to Cite Electronic Sources"

The Franklin & Marshall Handbook on Copyright Policy is available on eDisk in the Office of the Provost folder, under Copyright Policy and Handbook. It includes a "Checklist for Fair Use Analysis."

Louise Kulp, Visual Resources Librarian, Shadek-Fackenthal Library

***Please use images from the sources in this guide
according to their associated rights and reproductions policies.***

Updated November 2008, Louise Kulp