Research Guides: CHAPS Research Guide: Finding Images

Citing Images

Like articles and other texts, images must be properly cited in papers. Your list of references may include but is not limited to:

Artist’s name
Title of the work, in italics
Date of creation
Institution or city in in which the work is stored or located
Website URL or database name
Medium of publication
Date of access

Look at the following:

Library of Congress guide to citing photographs in MLA Format

Library of Congress guide to citing photographs in Chicago Format

EasyBib: This free online bibliography maker will create citations for you in MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian. Select 'digital image' or 'photograph' etc. from the 'All 59 options' tab and fill in as much information as possible.

Copyright Law and Art Images

Just because you find an image on the Internet does not mean you have legal permission to use it in assigments or presentations. To find out whether you can use an image or not, look for usage guidelines on the site itself. And check out these resources on copyright as it relates to images.

Digital Images and Copyright: A brief guide to using digital images from the Internet made by Colgate University.

Copyright, Museums, and Licensing of Art Images: A guide from Columbia University Libraries on copyright, ownership, and the appropriate use of art images.

Stanford Copyright and Fair Use: Explanation and examples of fair use cases compiled by the Stanford University Libraries.

Visual Resource Association's Statement on Fair Use: This statement describes six uses of copyrighted still images that the VRA believes fall within the U.S. doctrine of fair use. The six uses are: 1) preservation (storing images for repeated use in a teaching context and transferring images to new formats); 2) use of images for teaching purposes; 3) use of images (both large, high-resolution images and thumbnails) on course websites and in other online study materials; 4) adaptations of images for teaching and classroom work by students; 5) sharing images among educational and cultural institutions to facilitate teaching and study; and 6) reproduction of images in theses and dissertations. This statment was written by VRA's Intellectual Property Rights Committee with the guidance of a Legal Advisory Committee of preeminent copyright scholars and legal experts.

Internet Image Searching Tutorial: Use this interactive tutorial to improve your image searching skills.

Rutgers Image Databases

Artstor
Artstor is a digital image library of over 2 million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes. A non-profit organization funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Artstor digitizes and provides high-quality digitized images from numerous museums, academic institutions, and private foundations.
Oxford Art Online
The majority of the content in Oxford Art Online comes from Grove Art Online, which contains over 45,000 articles on every aspect of the visual arts - painting, sculpture, graphic arts, architecture, decorative arts and photography - from prehistory to the present day. Additionally, Grove Art Online provides access to more than 6,000 images through partnerships with major organizations such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Art Resource, Art Images for College Teaching (AICT), and numerous international galleries and individual artists.
Luna Commons
Database of exhibitions and collections from a wide range of museums, libraries, and archives.

Open Access Image collections

"Open access" means the images are made available to view for free, however this does not mean that they do not have copyrights attached. For copyright and use restrictions, locate and read the image use policy for each collection.

Aga Khan Visual Archive
Architecture, urbanism, and the built environment in the Islamic world. Images available for research and educational use only; an MIT licensed collection.

Art Images for College Teaching (AICT)
Free access (for educational purposes) to the study collection of art historian Allen T. Kohl. Emphasis on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture.

American Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850-1920
A study collection from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, hosted by the Library of Congress American Memory Project. Search, or browse by subject, name, or place name.
Architecture, Urban Planning, and Visual Arts (MIT Rotch Library)
American stuff, for the most part. Search by city, architect, building type, etc. For research and educational uses only. Images licensed to MIT users only.

Archnet
Focused on Muslim cultures and civilizations, with images of historical monuments, contemporary architecture, and general views. Search, or browse by country, building type, style, usage, decade of construction, or site name.
Art & Archaeology Artifact Browser
Part of the Perseus Digital Library of materials on the Greco-Roman world, the Browser documents 424 ancient buildings and 179 sites, in addition to objects.

Built in America (Library of Congress)
Measured drawings and photographs from the Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Record, and Historic American Landscapes Survey. Search, or browse by subject or place name.
CATENA - Digital Archive of Historic Gardens + Landscape
Landscape history resource, with a focus on the villa. Sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center, NYC.
Cities and Buildings Database (University of Washington)
Multi-disciplinary collection of over 10,000 digitized images of buildings and cities drawn from across time and throughout the world, freely available to anyone with access to the Web for use in the classroom, student study, or for individual research purposes.Search for buildings by country, city, style, title, architect, date of construction, and other fields.
Cities Around the World (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries)
Over 6,100 photographic images of more than 450 ancient and modern cities worldwide, taken between 1942 and 1994. From the slide collections of the American Geographical Society Library.
Emporis Images - Emporis.com
REFERENCE ONLY! A commercial photo archive, especially useful for searching for building type examples. Other parameters include location, building name, style, facade material, and colors. ALL IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHTED.
Great Buildings Collection Online
RIBApix - British Architectural Library (Royal Institute of British Architects)
Public access image database featuring world architecture of all periods, interior design, landscape, topography, planning, construction and the decorative arts. Browse, simple or advanced search (architect or building), and subject search. Download low-resolution images for personal use or teaching purposes Images are copyrighted by the BAL/RIBA - "the world's most extensive visual archive devoted to architecture" (see their Terms and Conditions).
SPIRO (University of California-Berkeley)
List adapted from Clemson University Historic Preservation LibGuide

Architecture and Map Images

SAH Archipedia
SAH Archipedia is an authoritative online encyclopedia of the U.S. built environment organized by the Society of Architectural Historians and the University of Virginia Press. It contains histories, photographs, and maps for over 20,000 structures and places.
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
The historical map collection has over 94,000 maps and related images online. The collection includes rare 16th through 21st century maps of America, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific, Arctic, Antarctic, and the World.
Library of Congress Map Collection