Digital Collections
- American Memory, The Library of CongressSubject categories: Advertising, African American History, Architecture, Landscape, Cities, Towns, Culture, Folklife, Environment, Conservation, Government, Law, Immigration, American Expansion, Literature, Maps, Native American History, Performing Arts, Music, Presidents, Religion, Sports, Recreation, Technology, Industry, War, Military, Women's History. Also see the Library of Congress Flickr Commons collection.
- New York Public Library Digital GalleryProvides free and open access to over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
- Smithsonian Institution Collections SearchSearch archival, print and digital content. Over 7.4 million records with 568,100 images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other resources from the Smithsonian's museums, archives & libraries, including the American Art Museums, the Portrait Gallery, Archives of American Art, National Museum of American History, and more.
- Shared Shelf Commons (ARTstor)Shared Shelf Commons is a free, open-access library of images. Search and browse collections with tools to zoom, print, export, and share images. Includes some public domain Cornell collections.
- National Gallery of Art | NGA ImagesThis repository of digital images documenting the National Gallery of Art collections allows users to search, browse, share, and download images believed to be in the public domain. More than 20,000 open access digital images up to 3000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use.
- Google Art ProjectGoogle's "collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail."
Image tools
TinEye Reverse Image Search
Submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.
Compfight
Image search engine that locates high-resolution images with Creative Commons licenses for use in presentations, blogs, etc. Also retrieves stock photos.
Flickr - a large database of images
You may know Flickr as a public photo-sharing site with billions of images. In recent years, many archival image repositories (including the Cornell University Library) have begun sharing their copyright-free images via Flickr Commons, which has become a major image resource.
- Flickr: The CommonsImages with no known copyright (public domain) from cultural institutions worldwide. Be careful to take down captioning information when you save an image and rename saved image files! To save an image, click on the "down arrow" icon and select "view all sizes." Select your size and right click (on Macs: control + click) to save it to your hard drive or USB drive.
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons "provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry." You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."
- Creative Commons Search
- Creative Commons in Flickr
- Creative Commons search in Flickr
- Select the "only search within Creative Commons-licensed content" check box