Studio Art Resources: Finding Images

Image Gateway Include here are licensed commercial sources, publicly available collections, and images digitized from resources in the KU libraries, museums, and academic departments. Information and terms of use for each collection is found in the listing.

ARTstor Help & Tutorial, One of the most comprehensive image resources licensed by KU is ARTstor with more than 1 million images on a wide-range of topics. This guide introduces the resource and helps users learn to find, download, save, print, organize, and share images

AP Images Contains the archives of the Associated Press. New content is added constantly to news photographs, audio sound bites, and graphics spanning 180 years of history. Formerly called AccuNet/AP multimedia archive. 

Use the Guide to Streaming Video to learn what resources are available at KU and how you can use them in classes or projects.

 ArtBabble  Intended to showcase video art content in high quality format from a variety of sources and perspectives.

Images may be found in a variety of formats on publicly accessible web sites. Copyright restrictions may apply to these images, and the web master of a given site may need to be consulted when images are used.  Many large and small museums have excellent web sites which display images from their collections as well as information about the images and contacts for more assistance. The library also has many lavishly illustrated books and journals that are available for research.

Finding Images on the Web A tutorial prepared at Boston Univ. that provides an excellent introduction for image searching.

Art Resource A large commercial photo archive of fine art from prehistoric times to the present. Includes over three million transparencies and black and white photographs of works cross-referenced by subject, title, artist, period, place, and medium.

Image Collections and Online Art Directory of image websites compiled by Pat Young at the University of Michigan.

Oxford Art Online Gateway access to Grove Art Online and other Oxford art reference resources. In addition to the more than 23,000 subject entries and 21,000 biographies, the product offers 40,000 image links and 5,000 images contained within Grove Art Online.

The KU Libraries collection includes hundreds of films on DVD. You can search for them by looking in the Library Catalog and Setting the Search Limit so the "item Type" is Video/film/other projected media. Most library locations will house the films in a separate sequence either open to browsing or kept behind the desk for requests.   

Internet Movie Database IMDb is a comprehensive online source for film facts—who directed a film, who starred in it, etc. The database contains over 1.2 million titles and 2.7 million names. The information in this database is supplied from a number of sources, not all of them scholarly, and the information it contains may not always be authoritative.

Potential sources for your own projects. Most should be freely available, but please check the exact licensing restrictions carefully.

• Flickr: Creative Commons
  To search Flickr for photos with a Creative Commons license, use the advanced search and check the box at the bottom. This video will show you how. Licenses differ, so always check the license before using a photo.
• Wikimedia Commons
  "Wikimedia Commons is a media repository that is created and maintained... by volunteers....it provides a central repository for freely licensed photographs, diagrams, animations, music, spoken text, video clips, media of all sorts."
• Creative Commons Content Directory
  A CC directory of content licensed under the Creative Commons licenses. Includes Image, Video, Audio, and Text. Always check the exact terms of the license!
• Morguefile
  Free high resolution digital stock photography for corporate or public use. "The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits." There are licensing restrictions - check them!
• Uncle Sam's Photo Archives
  Public Domain photos from the various websites of the US Government - everything from bald eagles to buses to old spy satellite photos.