Research Guides: Research Help: Audio and Visual Resources

Searching for Images

Images:

Art Collections:

ARTstor This link opens in a new window Digital images (over 1 million) in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities and the social sciences.

Ad*Access Images and information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.
Europeana Paintings, music, films and books from Europe's galleries, libraries, archives and museums.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts Digital Collections Digital collections of art, music, video and news from the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Smithsonian Archives of American Art Archives of American Art collects, preserves, and makes available primary sources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States.
Unurth: Street Art Images of street art from around the world.
Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture The Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture collects and creates electronic resources for study and research of the decorative arts, with a particular focus on Early America. Included are electronic texts and facsimiles, image databases, and Web resources.
British Library Online Gallery
Library of Congress Digital Collections Access online collections: view maps & photographs; read letters, diaries & newspapers; hear personal accounts of events; listen to sound recordings & watch historic films.
Sistine Chapel Information about the Sistine Chapel from the Vatican Website. Includes a virtual tour.
National Gallery of Art Images Provides access to over 50,000 images of artwork that are available for download, most without use restrictions

Free Photograph Collections

Openverse Openverse is a tool that allows users to search over 500 million images that are freely available to be freely used and adapted.
EveryStockPhoto Searches for free photos on the internet. View a photo's license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of the photo.
Free Images Search through a collection of 6000 photographs. Photos are free to use for personal or commercial purposes, just make sure to credit the photographer.
Wikimedia Commons Free access to images, sound, and video files in the public domain or with Creative Commons licenses.
NYPL Digital Gallery Provides access to 900,000+ images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.
Library of Congress: Prints & Photgraphs Online Catalog Historical photographs from the Library of Congress. Search by keyword or browse by collection.
U.S. National Archives Photostream Documents and Photographs digitized and uploaded to Flickr.
LIFE Photo Archive Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching 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.

Other Image Collections

The Cell Image Library "This library is a public and easily accessible resource database of images, videos, and animations of cells, capturing a wide diversity of organisms, cell types, and cellular processes. " Video/image entries also include information about cellular processes or component featured.
Government Comics Collection Government-sponsored comics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
Dr. Seuss Went to War: A Catalog of Political Cartoons This collection contains the political cartoons that Dr. Seuss created between 1940-1943.

Searching for Video Resources

Documentary Films and Academic Films

AdViews: A Digital Archive of Vintage Television Commercials The AdViews digital collection provides access to thousands of historic commercials created for clients or acquired by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency or its predecessor during the 1950s - 1980s.

Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
This database provides thousands of educational films in a large variety of subject areas as well as archival films and newsreels.

To link directly to any film or segment, use the Title URL link below the video. Do not use the URL in your address bar. Titles are subject to change. For more help, contact a librarian.

Moving Image Research Center
LearnersTV This is a comprehensive site providing thousands of downloadable Video lectures, live online tests,etc in almost every academic field.
European Film Gateway The EFG Portal gives you quick access to hundreds of thousands of film historical documents as preserved in European film archives and cinémathèques: photos, posters, programmes, periodicals, censorship documents, rare feature and documentary films, newsreels and other materials.
Culture Unplugged -- Documentary Films An online film archive to watch films (documentaries, short films, talks & more).
Documentary Network
Doc-film-net has been archiving the most important documentaries for the last 4 years and serving these free of charge. 190 films available. Users are restricted to 1 hour of use per day due to bandwidth costs.
Explore
Includes documentaries, live-cams, and photos on the environmental and human-rights issues.
Documentary Heaven
Over 1600 documentaries on a variety of different topics. Videos come from places around the web, including YouTube.
Folkstreams Folkstreams is a non-profit dedicated to finding, preserving, contextualizing, and showcasing documentary films on American traditional cultures.
NASA Multimedia Includes images, videos, podcasts, and more from NASA.
The Cell Image Library "This library is a public and easily accessible resource database of images, videos, and animations of cells, capturing a wide diversity of organisms, cell types, and cellular processes. " Video/image entries also include information about cellular processes or component featured.
EVIA Digital Archive A digital archive of ethnographic video for use by scholars and instructors.
Periodic Table of Videos Videos about elements, molecules, and compounds from the University of Nottingham.
Travel Film Archive The Travel Film Archive is a collection of travelogues and educational and industrial films - many of them in color - that show the world the way it was between 1900 and 1970.
EUscreen EUscreen offers free access to thousands of archival audiovisual items. It brings together clips that provide an insight into the social, cultural, political, and economic events that have shaped the 20th and 21st centuries.
Film Noir Foundation The Film Noir Foundation promotes educational resources regarding the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of film noir as an international cinematic movement.
YouTube EDU
On YouTube EDU, you have access to a broad set of educational videos that range from academic lectures to inspirational speeches and everything in between.
TED ED
"Lessons worth browsing." Educational videos from TED. Each video is accompanied by a lesson and quiz for students.

Feature Films Online

Open Culture Compiles thousands of movies that are freely available online, including classics, indies, film noir, documentaries and others.
Classic Cinema Online
Hundreds of classic films, newsreels, shorts, and silent films.

Maps and Atlases

Library of Congress: Maps Collection Selection of digitzed maps from the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress.
U.S. Government Maps Includes Census, environmental, health and weather maps.
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library contains over 200,000 historic maps and 5,000 historic atlases from the 15th century to the present. Browse through digitized versions online by location, subject, author, date, publisher and projection.
Bodleian Map Room Includes digitized maps of British history and many areas of the world that were once part of the British Empire.
World Digital Library Links to over 5,000 primary documents and images from collections around the world. Sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Search by date, era, country, continent, topic, and type of resource.
Old Maps Online The OldMapsOnline Portal is an easy-to-use gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world. It allows the user to search for online digital historical maps across numerous different collections via a geographical search. Search by typing a place-name or by clicking in the map window, and narrow by date. The search results provide a direct link to the map image on the website of the host institution.
Map of Life Map of Life "allows you to explore globally the geographic distributions for any terrestrial vertebrate species (as well as North American freshwater fish)." Also plans to have a set of tools for querying, accessing, downloading and summarizing the data.
ORBIS - Mapped Model of the Roman World Travel ancient Rome with this interactive map. It takes into account seasonal variations, means of transportation and communication costs. "ORBIS reveals the true shape of the Roman world and provides a unique resource for our understanding of premodern history." Created by Stanford University.

Create your own map!

Create Your Own Map

WorldMap A resource from Harvard University which allows you to create a map using one of their 1800 data sets, or upload your own data set. Any map you create can be embedded in a website, viewed on Google Earth or printed.
Public Data Explorer - Google Labs "Play with the tool to create visualizations of public data, link to them, or embed them in their own webpages." Use data from the sources listed in data directory on the website, or upload your own. From Google Labs.
GapMinder Gapminder identifies systematic misconceptions about important global trends and proportions and uses reliable data to develop easy to understand teaching materials to rid people of their misconceptions.

Sound Recordings

National Jukebox The National Jukebox freely provides access to recordings from the collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives.
Wikimedia Commons Free access to images, sound, and video files in the public domain or with Creative Commons licenses.
British Library Archival Sound Recordings Online collections from one of the world's largest sound archives, including sounds from: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and the environment.
International Music Score Library Project The International Music Score Library provides access to all public domain music scores, as well as contemporary works that have been made available.
Jamendo Jamendo is a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses.
Alan Lomax Sound Recordings The Sound Recordings catalog comprises over 17,400 digital audio files, from 1946 into the 1990s. Alan Lomax is most famous for his work in the penitentiaries, plantations, and lonely farms of the Mississippi Delta, where he made recordings traditional African American culture. He also made recordings in the remote communities of the Caribbean, Europe, and North Africa.
Free Music Archive The Free Music Archive offers free downloads under Creative Commons and other licenses.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

Research Help: Audio and Visual Resources

Searching for Images

Images:

Art Collections:

Free Photograph Collections

Free Photograph Collections

Other Image Collections

Other Image Collections

Searching for Video Resources

Documentary Films and Academic Films

Documentary Films and Academic Films

Feature Films Online

Feature Films Online

Maps and Atlases

Create your own map!

Create Your Own Map

Sound Recordings

Sound Recordings