Visual and Performing Arts Resources Research Guide

Finding images can be challenging, but we have some great resources available here at the Mansfield Library to assist you.

Online Databases Available at the Mansfield Library:

* ARTstor (available from this link.)

* CAMIO (available from this link.)

* Grove Art Online (available from this link.)

- This resource is now part of a suite of other resources called Oxford Art Online.

- Click on the "Images" link from the main page to get started. You will need your NetID in order to connect to this resource from off-campus.

Internet:

* Finding Images on the Web http://www.bu.edu/library/instruction/findimages/index.html

- This “meta-site” gives links to online guides for locating images on the web. It was put together by an art librarian.

* Individual museums:

- If you are going to “Google” anything, be sure to “google” individual museums to see if they have any digital image collections. The Louvre, for example, has a good portion of artwork images available online. The Metropolitan Museum of Art also has some nice images from their collections available. Also try Google Image Search.

* Free Art Resources on the Web. Art Libraries of North America (ARLIS/NA) http://www.arlisna.org/resources/onlinepubs/freeart.html

- Created by art librarians of ARLIS/NA, this is an authoritative meta-site of free art resources available online.

Other interesting individual web sites for finding images:

* Ad*Access: http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/
- Contains reproductions of newspaper and magazine advertisements from 1911 through 1955.

* American Memory: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
- Contains items, including images, related to the "American experience."

* Flickr Commons: http://www.flickr.com/commons
- Items found in this collection carry "no known copyright restrictions."  They are mainly located in public cultural institutions such as the Smithsonian, Library of Congress, and others.

* Getty Images: http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/AdvancedSearch.aspx
- Contains photos, stock video footage, as well as some music.  Keep in mind that this is a proprietary site and you may need to pay to use some items. 

* LIFE Photo Archive: http://images.google.com/hosted/life
- You can search for published and unpublished photos from the LIFE archive here.  Google hosts this project, so locating images in this collection is similar to using Google Image Search. 

* Medical/Health Image Collection (Emory University Rollins School of Public Health): http://www.sph.emory.edu/PHIL/PHILimage.php
- Provides a list of links to Internet collections of medical and health-related images.  Warning: some links may take you to subscription-only resources.

* New York Public Library (NYPL) Digital Gallery: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm
Contains nearly 700,000 images from the NYPL's digital collections.

* Reelposter Gallery: http://www.reelposter.com/search.php
- This site can help you find advertisement posters for vintage films. Keep in mind that the site is proprietary and they use the search mechanism as a means to sell the posters you find on it.

* Sciences- Finding and Using Images (Wesleyan University Library): http://libguides.wesleyan.edu/content.php?pid=14652&sid=98839
This is a library guide that can help you locate more scientific images. 

* VADS: http://www.vads.ac.uk/advsearch.php
- Contains over 100,000 images, mainly from United Kingdom sources.  This resource also allows you to zoom in on images as well as save them to an account on the web site. 

* World Digital Archive: http://www.wdl.org/en/
- This site includes primary source materials-- including images-- from online digital archives around the world.

* WorldImages: http://worldimages.sjsu.edu/
- Locates images from around the world; some are not included in ARTstor. Image quality and searching interface is not the best, but they can still provide access to surrogate images that may not be covered elsewhere.

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