How to find images on the internet

Images can be found just about everywhere on the mighty internet. Below you’ll find some interesting gateways to larger image collections. Some are for free, some ask for hard bucks. Some are copyrighted, others are not or even others have a Creative Commons license. If you have located an image somewhere in the digital chaos of the world wide web, always check the conditions of use. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

The easiest way to search images is to use search engines :

Ask image search
Google advanced image search
Yahoo image search

Next you can search Creative Commons images,

Creative Commons Web site, Creative Commons explained and portal
Creative Commons image search
Google Creative Commons search (yes try using the advanced search features of Google iso of the ususal simple search bar)
Yahoo Creative Commons search
everystockphoto.com is a search engine for creative commons photos, located in Vancouver

and free stock image collections (always nice if it’s for free, but read the fine print of some of these…) :

DeviantART
FreeFoto.com
Free Images.co.uk
Imageafter
MorgueFile (The term “morgue file” is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats)
OpenPhoto.Net
Stock.xchng

Media resources are great for finding recent images :

AFP (Agence France-Presse)
BBC Photo Library (sometimes there seems to be a problem with this site – I’m trying to figure it out)
Empics (Press Association)
Nettizen Online Newspaper Directory
News Directory, a guide to all online English-language media (worldwide), over 3,600 newspapers, 4,800 magazines, hundreds of television stations plus colleges, visitor bureaus, governmental agencies, travel links, and comics ; more than 14,500 links in all
NI (News International) Syndication
Reuters

Or you could check dedicated photojournalist resources :

Association of Photographers
EPUK (Editorial Photographers United Kingdom & Ireland)
NPPA (National Press Photographers Association)
NUJ (National Union of Journalists)
World Press Photo

Some commercial image collection can be found at (read : you have to pay, subscribe, have credit,…) :

About the Image blog
BAPLA (British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies)
BigStockPhoto
Big White Box
Clipart.com
Corbis
Getty Images
Fotolia
iStockPhoto
Jupiterimages Unlimited
PACA (Picture Archive Council of America)
Stockxpert

Or if you are desperately seeking historical images, have a look here :

UNESCO’s Archival Portal, an enormous portal to archives around the world, a bit overwhelming.
UK Public Libraries Page, access to images available at local libraries in the UK
UK Higher Education and Research Libraries, access via these libraries to large image collections, but will take time to search
Sensitive Map, similar as the previous but using a clickable map to direct you to an institution
Libweb, a portal to 7500 libraries in 135 countries which contain of course images
24hourmuseum, a virtual UK museum
Cornucopia, an online database of information about more than 6,000 collections in the UK’s museums, galleries, archives and libraries
Virtual Library Museums Pages, a distributed directory of on-line museums
EIG (Education Image Gallery), nice resource for schools
EnrichUK, a searchable portal linking 150 websites that have been supported with Lottery good causes money from the UK
BBC History
PBS History, some pictures, but mainly movies ; still a nice portal with lots of material including teacher resources (PBS, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, is a non–profit media enterprise owned and operated by the nation’s 348 public television stations)
Scran, part of the Scran Trust – a registered charity – whose aim is to provide educational access to digital materials representing our material culture and history
British History Online
Best of History Web Sites
Voice of the Shuttle, another overwhelming source of information, I need 48-hour-days

Ok, if you didn’t yet find the right image you need, try some of the following specialist sources :

Directories of museums and art galleries

24hourmuseum (also mentioned as a source for historical images)
Art Guide, the comprehensive internet guide to the art collections of Great Britain and Ireland
Art Museum Network, up-to-date information about the news and activities of more than 200 leading museums around the world including news about the exhibitions, acquisitions, and programs of institutions, and links to all members ; so indirect access to image collections worldwide (well most are American, but other countries are represented as well)
Cornucopia, also mentioned as a source for historical images
Virtual Library Museums Pages, and this one as well

Directories of contemporary art galleries

Artnet.com, actually a place to buy, sell and research fine art online, with over 1,200 galleries in over 250 cities worldwide, more than 100,000 works by over 25,000 artists from around the globe represented on this site ; so lots of art images
AskArt, a comprehensive source for information on contemporary American artists
Gallery Channel, a nice site with information on 8,400 exhibition venues, 21,400 exhibitions and 25,600 artists worldwide – all available for public view, a nice site, easy to access

Other museums with significant online collections

British Museum
Hermitage, a famous museum along the embankment of the River Neva, right in the heart of St Petersburg, Russia
Louvre, situated in Paris as you surely know
Metropolitan Museum of Art, near Central Park, New York
Museum of Modern Art, also in New York between 5th and 6th street
National Gallery in London
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Tate holds the national collection of British art from 1500 and of international modern art. All works can be found on this site.
Victoria and Albert Museum

Or perhaps you are looking for builidings or other architectural images ?

Great Buildings Online, with integrated Google maps ; nice try but too many adds and needs a complete design overhaul ; still nice idea.
Index of Art Historical Sites, no adds, but needs redesigning, although lots of architectural images
RIBApix, another one, better, but search facilities not always optimal

Other aggregated art image collections (some commercial) :

AHDS Visual Arts
American Memory, part of the Library of Congress
Art Resource
ARTstor, aimed at Canadian and American institutions
Bridgeman Education, also aimed at institutions
David Rumsey Visual Collections, both free and subscription based collections
Courtauld Art and Architecture collection
Grove Art, free trial but subscription required later on
OAIster, with Firefox plugin (!)
RLG Camio, for institutions mainly
RLG Cultural Materials
Scholars Resource, lots of teacher resources
Art History Resources on the Web
AICT, Art Images for College Teaching
Artcyclopedia
Smithsonian Art and Design
UCLA Arts Library Sources, interesting portal
ULAN, Union List of Artist Names, search using structured vocabularies (Part of Getty Museum website)
WorldArt Web Kiosk, access the Californian University image database

Not all of us are into history and art. Some might want scientific images :

Via RDN (Resource Discovery Network) : a wealth of information including texts, images, maps, etc.

BIOME (Life Sciences, Health and Medicine)
EEVL (Engineering, Mathematics and Computing)
Gesource (Geography and Environment) -
PSIgate (Physical Sciences) -
(In the future RDN is to be found at Intute)

General scientific image databases :

Science and Society Picture Library (UK based)
Science Photo Library
ScienceImage
Science.gov (USA government)
US Government Resources for Science Images
USA Centres for Disease Control (CDC) Public Health Image Library
Hubble Space Telescope
NASA
NOAA, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
USDA, US Department of Agriculture
USDoD, US Department of Defense
USDOE, US Department of Energy
USFWS, US Fish and Wildlife Service

Medical images

Anatline, a web-based interface for viewing high resolution anatomical images (very nice !)
Bristol Biomed Image Archive, only for Athens member institutions (if your institution is not a member, you can apply via the website)
Images from the History of Medicine, website of the US National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Karolinska Institutet, images provided by Sweden’s largest medical university
Medical Images on the Web, overview of medical image databases provided by the University of Nebraska
MPL Medical Photographic Library
TDR Image Library with a focus on tropical diseases
Viperlib Visual Perception Images, images related to visual perception (obviously…)
Weill Cornell Medical Library directory

Enough about humans ? What about other species ?

Arkive,the Noah’s Ark for the Internet era – a unique global initiative, gathering together into one centralised digital library, films, photographs and audio recordings of the world’s species
Agripicture picture library, a select diverse collection of generic farming images
Biodidac, Biological Images
Canon Photo Gallery, part World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
ImageBank, Higher Education Academy, Centre for Bioscience, UK
Botanical Society of America, online image collection drawings actually

Earth is also a topmodel as we can see in these images :

American Geological Institute Earth Science World Image Bank
Geo-Images Project maintained at Berkeley University by G. Donald Bain, Director of the Geography Computing Facility
Picture Library of the famous Geological Society of London
National (UK) Archive of Geological Photographs

And finally I wanted to include some resources for maps :

Bodleian Library’s Map Room, and that’s exactly what it is, a ‘room’ full of links
Odden’s Bookmarks, enough links to fill a lifetime
National Geographic Maps, always beautifully made
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection from the University of Texas
David Rumsey Map Collection if you like historical maps
DEMIS World Map Server, a software program to generate maps (not for free…)
Online Map Creation (OMC) Tool, a software package to create high-quality postscript maps in various projections (free)
Timemap TMJava is a novel mapping applet which generates complete interactive maps with a few simple lines of html, and… an open source project of the University of Sydney ; I need to test this as it seems like an awesome application. Anyone tried this already ?
Earthbrowser, software application allowing you to browse the surface of our blue planet (free trial, rated at 23.95$ with updates), including webcams, satellite updates, etc.
Atlas of Cyberspace, an atlas of maps and graphic representations of the geographies of the new electronic territories of the Internet, the World-Wide Web and other emerging Cyberspaces, interesting site
And last but not least Google earth

This list is not intended to be exhaustive. If you know of other resources we should include, please put a comment. Thank you.

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