Library: Visual Literacy: Find Visual Sources

Images in a book?

Say you are looking for images by a particular artist and you've found a book about that artist in the library catalog. How can you tell whether the book contains images?

Below is an example of a cookbook. Does it contain images or illustrations? Yes! [col. ill] And at least some of them are in color!

Health and Science Images

Close view of a red ripe strawberry revealing the rough, dimpled skin of this fruit, which allows you to see why the strawberry needs to be thoroughly washed. Photo by Debora Cartagena, 2012 from Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Public Domain.

Gray's Anatomy Online
An online version of the 1918 edition, including over 1,200 illustrations; browse text sections for images in context or click "illustrations" to browse images only.
History of Medicine (IHM)
70,000 images in the collections of the History of Medicine Division (HMD) of the U.S National Library of Medicine (NLM). The collection includes portraits, photographs, caricatures, genre scenes, posters, and graphic art illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine dated from the 15th to 21st century.
NASA Image Exchange (NIX)
Offers public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections.
Public Health Image Library
Electronic gateway to CDC's pictures; open to health professionals, the media, laboratory scientists, educators, students, and the worldwide public to use this material for reference, teaching, presentation, and public health messages. The content is organized into hierarchical categories of people, places, and science, and is presented as single images, image sets, and multimedia files.

General Images

Flickr Commons
Search and use hundreds of images with "no known copyright restrictions." A joint venture of Flickr and the Library of Congress, Flickr Commons was designed to increase access to publicly-held photography collections.
Google Images
Searchable by keyword. Retrieved images can be limited by several parameters including size, aspect ratio, type (face, photo, line drawing, clip art), site or domain, color or black & white, filetype, country, usage rights, and adult content.
Luna Commons
A new source for finding valuable, educational content from digital collections built in the Insight Software from Luna Imaging, Inc. and presented in Insight's dynamic new LUNA browser.
Open Clipart Library
This project aims to create an archive of clip art that can be used for free for any use.
Public Domain Sherpa
This page lists resources for high-quality public domain photographs
Wikipedia Public Domain Image Resources

Art Images

Pastoral, Frederick Cayley Robinson, 1923-24. Photo: © Tate, London 2012’

AMICA Library
The AMICA Library contains over 108,000 works of art from the collections of contributing museums worldwide. Cultures and time periods range from contemporary art, Native American and Inuit art, to ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian works, along with Japanese and Chinese works.
Artcyclopedia
Comprehensive index to over 7,000 artists and links to approximately 80,000 works, primarily painting and sculpture.
Art Images for College Teaching
AICT is intended to disseminate images of art and architectural works in the public domain on a free-access, free-use basis to all levels of the educational community, as well as to the public at large.
Art Images Library's Photostream [from Flickr]
20,000 plus fine art and photography images from known and mid-emerging artists with complete captions.
Galaxy of Images
Contains a portion of the more than 1.5 million printed books and manuscripts in the collections of Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
GLOPAD
GloPAD (Global Performing Arts Database) records include authoritative, detailed, multilingual descriptions of digital images, texts, video clips, sound recordings, and complex media objects related to the performing arts around the world, plus information about related pieces, productions, performers, and creators.
Google Art Project
Explore selected galleries virtually, through a kind of “interior” street view; offers extremely high resolution images of artworks contained within those galleries/museums;form virtual collections of artworks that can be shared and annotated.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Collection Search
The collection encompasses nearly 450,000 works of art, from ancient Egyptian to contemporary.
The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) Online Image Collections
Portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in teaching and research.
Web Gallery of Art
Searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 11th to mid-19th centuries; dual mode allows you to view images side-by-side to compare and contrast.

Culture, Current Events and History Images

Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. 1943. Calesthenics/photograph by Ansel Adams. From: American Memory, Library of Congress.

German History in Documents and Images
German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) is a comprehensive collection of primary source materials documenting Germany's political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present.
Historic Houses Trust Picture Catalogue
Photographs of historic houses and house portraits from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Illustrated Newspaper Supplements (Flickr Collection)
Illustrated newspapers (starting 1909) from the Library of Congress's Historical Newspapers image collection, displayed on Flickr. Contains many public domain images.
Library of Congress Flickr Groups
With the launch of the Library of Congress pilot, Flickr began a new initiative called "The Commons." Cultural heritage institutions that join The Commons are sharing images from their photographic collections that have no known copyright restrictions.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Catalog Online
View a digital collection of photographs and prints owned by the Library of Congress, dating back to the Civil War. Also includes posters, comics, daguerreotypes, and blueprints.
New York City Department of Records Image Gallery
The Online Gallery provides free and open research access to over 800,000 items digitized from the Municipal Archives’ collections, including photographs, maps, motion-pictures and audio recordings. The holdings are arranged by collection; or you may search “All Collections” by keyword or any of the advanced search criteria.
New York Public Digital Gallery
Provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
Smithsonian Collections Search Center
Search all SI collections for images, sound files, videos and digital manuscripts. Select "Only return results with online media."
Vacations.info
Hundred of public domain images of vacation spots around the world.
World Digital Library
Created by UNESCO and the Library of Congress, the World Digital Library provides free online access to world cultural treasures. Includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings from a variety of countries.

NPR's The Picture Show

Image Reverse Look Up

Google Reverse Image Search
Click on camera icon to upload image or use image URL
Tin Eye

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Visual Literacy: Find Visual Sources

Finding Visual Sources