Image Resources

General - all subjects

• BUBL - Link image collections.
  BUBL LINK is a catalogue of selected Internet resources covering all academic subject areas and catalogued according to DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification). All items are selected, evaluated, catalogued and described.
• BUBL Link: catalogue of Internet resources: Moving images.
• BUFVC (British Universities Film and Video Council): Moving Image Gateway.
  The Moving Image Gateway (MIG) is a new service that collects together websites that relate to moving images and sound and their use in higher and further education. The sites are classified by academic discipline, some forty subjects from Agriculture to Women's Studies, collected within the four main categories of Arts & Humanities, Bio-Medical, Social Sciences and Science & Technology.
• Film & Sound Online.
  Hundreds of hours of downloadable films and videos for free use in Further and Higher Education across the curriculum - from medicine and the life sciences through archaeology, media studies, performing arts and music to philosophy, history and the social sciences and much more...
• Freefoto.
  One of the largest collections of free photographs for non-commercial use on the Internet.
• The Reel.
  Moving image database of television advertising, short films, pop promotions and other creative material.
• SCRAN.
  Covers Arts, Social Sciences, Sciences, Education, Health, Leisure & Tourism.  The learning resource service hosts over 336,500 images, movies and sounds from museums, galleries, archives and the media. It can be used generically - as a substitute for clip art - or for particular learning applications.  In addition, the educational environment supports 3,500 learning Pathfinder Packs for your instant use; and there are tools such as Navigator, Stuff, Create, Multicreate, Mini Website and Albums to let you locate, keep, design and assemble your own learning resources.

Architecture

• The Great Buildings Collection.
  The leading architecture reference site on the web.  This gateway to architecture around the world and across history documents a thousand buildings and hundreds of leading architects, with 3D models, photographic images and architectural drawings, commentaries, bibliographies, web links, and more.
• Images of England.
  A digital library of photographs of England's listed buildings, together with text descriptions.

Art and design images

Art History

Here is a selection which specialise in art and design images from a historical perspective.

• AICT - Art Images for College Teaching.
  The AICT site is maintained by the Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD). A free use educational resource it covers Art history images through five periods: Ancient, Medieval Era, Renaissance  & Baroque, 18th  - 20th century  and non Western. It does not have a keyword search option.
• Art Resource.
  An art stock photo archive which contains over 100,000 keyword-searchable fine art images.
• Bridgeman Art Library Archive.
  A source of fine art images from over eight thousand collections and twenty nine thousand artists.
  Bridgeman represent museums, galleries and artists throughout the world by providing a central source of fine art for image users.
• Oxford Art Online.
  This directs you to a variety of art image collections.
  Art Resource, Bridgeman Art Library and Art Image Links provide searchable image collections covering hundreds of areas in the visual arts.
  • Grove Art Online (includes Jane Turner's Dictionary of Art).
  • The Oxford Companion to Western Art.
  • The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics.
  • The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art terms.
• Pre-Raphaelites Online Resource, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery.
  Birmingham Museums & Art Gallerys have digitised their Pre-Raphaelite collection. The collection is available for free to educational users and the general public. Requires Microsoft Silverlight to zoom images.
• VADS (Visual Arts Data Service).
  Searchable database of art and design images from major archival resources. Requires personal registration. A searchable collection of 23 image banks which includes Fashion, Design and textiles.
• Warwick History of Art Web: Image collections.
  This site lists scholarly web resources. It is maintained for the History of Art Department by Richard Parker, art subject specialist in the University Library.
• World Wide Web virtual library: history of art.
  A collection of links relating to Art History and computer applications in Art History. The site is sponsored by CHArt, the Computers and History of Art Group. This site is aimed at everybody interested in art, but it has a special focus on the academic study of Art History.

Enamelling

• ICVEA (International Vitreous Enamel Archive).

Contemporary Art

Fine Art

These are useful Internet sites relating to fine art and contemporary artists and include images of the artworks.

• Artangel.
  Artangel projects have included Rachel Whiteread's House and Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle.
• The Artists Information Company.
  Artists newsletter website with opportunities and advice for artists.
• Artifact directory.
  The arts and creative industries hub of the RDN.
• Art-online.org.
  Source for contemporary exhibitions with useful links.
• The-artists.org.
  The major modern & contemporary visual artists.
• Artupdate.com.
  A continually updated listing of exhibitions in Britain and abroad with links to gallery websites.
• Dia Center for the Arts in New York.
  Information on exhibitions and ongoing projects with links to other sites.
• Galleries UK.
  Monthly art listings magazine. Includes listings by area and a diary of new exhibitions by date.
• Institute of Contemporary Arts.
  Gallery and bookshop which includes artists' videos.
• Locus+.
  A public/contextual art project commissioning agency with archive of projects and profiles of artists.
• New Exhibitions of Contemporary Art.
  Listings of current exhibitions in London, Regions, Channel Islands, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
• Situations: Contemporary Art and the question of context.
  A programme devised to investigate the significance of context in the communication and production of contemporary art works.
• Tate Collection Insight.
  Offers new paths into the Tate collection through a comprehensive database of indexed images.

Video Art

• British Artists' Film & Video Study collection at Central St Martins' College of Art & Design.
  The Study Collection concentrates on the history of experimental film and video in Britain.
• Cinovid.
  Database of experimental film and video art.
• Electronic Arts Intermix.
  An American source for artists' videos and interactive media. Includes a selection of short excerpts of video works from the EAI collection.
• Hi-beam.
  Has links to specialist video retailers and has a bulletin board for artists and curators. Includes film clips.
• Lux.
  Promotes and supports mostly British artists' moving image work. Includes a calendar page of film & video related events in London.
• Video databank.
  The leading resource in the United States for videotapes by and about contemporary artists . Includes video clips that require Quicktime.

Film & Television Archives

• Moving History.
  A guide to UK film and television archives in the public sector: a research guide to the UK's twelve public sector moving images archives.

Medical Images

• X-Ray 2000.
  This page is written by a UK radiographer and contains thousands of radiographic images, freely available for viewing and downloading, plus a huge amount of reference information. The links section is particularly good.
• Eskeletons project.
  The e-Skeletons Project website created at the University of Texas at Austin enables you to view the bones of a human, gorilla, and baboon and gather information about them from an osteology database.
• Images.MD.
  A Medical images database. Collections include: Allergy, Cancers, Cardiology, Diabetes, Fractures, Neurology, Urology etc.
• Images from the History of Medicine.
  Provides access to nearly 60,000 images in the prints and photograph collection of the History of Medicine Division of the US National Library of Medicine.
• InnerBody.com.
  This commercial site contains a set of a few hundred anatomical images, with popup labels and linked descriptions. Unfortunately, it also uses popup advertising.
• Online Exploration of the Heart.
  This site offers several sections with activities, video and audio files, images and links to useful sites.
• Skeletal Muscles of the Human Body.
  An index with detailed information about skeletal muscles of the human body. This site includes information on each muscle under the headings origin, insertion, action, blood and nerve.
• The Whole Brain.
  This site offers images of the undiseased brain and of the diseased brain. It gives explanations of the images as well as guided tours and clickable images.

Natural History

• ARKive: Images of life on earth.
  ARKive is a not-for-profit initiative of Wildscreen. It is the Noah's Ark for the Internet era - the world's centralised digital library of films, photographs and associated recordings of species, accessible to all via the world wide web.
• Natural History Museum: Darwin Centre Archive.
  Darwin Centre Live consists of live webcasts and an archive of over 100 Darwin Centre live events that have been recorded and are available for free online viewing as streamed videos, using Windows Media Player or Quicktime. Collection includes Images of Nature, Parasites, DNA and Genetics, Under the Microscope and more.

News Archives

• ITN Archive.
  A searchable database that offers access to film clips from the ITN archive collections which includes material from British Pathe, Reuters, Channel 4, Filmfour, Gaumont British Newsreels, Granada Survival, Universal News and more.
• Screen Search.
  A catalogue of selected films from the Screen Archive South East collection. Searchable by themes e.g. family life, commemoration, rural life, seaside and more. Collections of films have been created and deposited with the archive by families, amateur film makers, cine societies, companies, local organisations and other groups.
• Times Digital Archive 1785-1985.
  This database also offers an image search function. Select the Picture Gallery and enter keywords. The images are PDF files of illustrations from the facsimile newspaper pages in context.

Sound Recordings

• British Library Archival Sound Recordings
  Contains 12,000 selected recordings of music, spoken word, and human & natural environments.

Further copyright information

• The Library Copyright web pages provide the information you need about using images in teaching.
• JISC Digital Media – Copyright & Digital Images.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

It provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright, so that you can modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.