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Images: Home

Image Databases

Library of Congress - Photographic Collections

LIFE Photo Archive - Millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

New York Public Library Digital Collections - Over 700,000 images digitized from primary sources and print rarities  including photographs, maps, manuscripts, and prints.

Find Free-to-Use Images

Find free-to-use images

When you do a Google Search, you can filter your results to find images, videos, or text that you have permission to use. To do this, use an Advanced Search filter called "usage rights" that lets you know when you can use, share, or modify something you find online.

Find images, text, & videos you can reuse

  1. Go to Advanced Image Search for images
  2. In the "all these words" box, type what you want to search.
  3. Scroll down to the "Usage rights" section, use the drop-down to choose what kind of license you want the content to have. "Free to Use or Share" will cover usage in most assignments.
  4. Click on  Advanced Search.

Finding and Using Online Images

EBSCO Image Quick View

Selected EBSCO databases include a Image Quick View search option. Selecting it lets you search for journal articles that include images. You can limit your image search to types of images: black and white photos, color photos, graphs, charts, maps, diagrams, or illustrations.

EBSCO images are copyrighted by the articles' publishers. While the images may be printed for personal, non-commercial use, or used in presentations in non-profit educational settings, they can't be posted on websites or used in any other form of publication or mass media without written permission.

EBSCO also has an image collection

Politcal Cartoons in the Public Domain

Political Cartoons: Seriously funny.  The Library of Congress offers thousands of political cartoons from across centuries of U.S. and European history online. Searching the Library’s Prints and Photographs Catalog is an excellent way to begin.

Political Cartoons from the Early 20th Century: Not Much Has Changed  This post from the Wordpress Blog Public Domain Images Online features political cartoons  published in the magazine Puck, a periodical featuring commentary and satire that was published between 1871 and 1918.

The Opper Project: Using Editorial Cartoons to teach History The Opper Project, named after Ohioan Frederick Burr Opper, an American-born cartoonist, is an on-line collection of historic editorial cartoons. Covering more than one hundred years of American history, the cartoons are organized topically with associated lesson plans.

PoliticalCartoons.com provides lists of editorial cartoonists in several categories. A collection of cartoons by many of these artists is available and updated daily. You can even send someone an e-greeting card with the cartoon of your choice on it! You can link to the cartoonists' websites and get the email addresses of those without websites. Lesson plans are available in the Teacher's Guide, for using the cartoons in the classroom.

Citing Images Found on Google

You must provide citations for images, just as you do for words, quotes, and ideas. Even if you find the image through Google, you must click on the image and go to the original source for the image (which won't be google -- it will be another website). To get to the original source, click on the image and then click "website for this image," usually on the upper right side of the screen. Here's an example of what happens when I want to cite this picture that I found by doing a google image search for "elephant":

 

Utilize Search Tools in Google Images to help define the images you want and to search by usage rights. Select "Labeled for Reuse" to find images not protected by copyright.

Google Image Search: How Do I Track, Verify or Find information About an Image?

Featured Websites

Canadiana - Images and Visual Resource Collections compiled by the University of Toronto Library

World Images - Primarily historical images organized into 18 categories, including Women, Science, Cities, Natural World, Science, and more.