HIST1050: The Modern World : Finding Images

A vast quantity of digital images have been made available for research purposes online and within the British Library, St Pancras. The collections are truly diverse, encompassing prints, drawings, maps, art works and photographs, as well as illuminated manuscripts, digitised bookbindings and philatelic collections.

The New York Public Library has digitized over 700,000 items, with more to come, and these can be searched or browsed through this site. There are many image files available through the site, including photographs, art and design, posters, and book art and illustrations, along with much more.

The Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) contains catalog records and digital images representing a rich cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints and Photographs Division and, in some cases, other units of the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress offers broad public access to these materials as a contribution to education and scholarship. The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.

The Europeana portal provides access to a large collection of images, including art, photography, maps, fashion, and other materials.

DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of the materials found through DPLA—photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more—are free and immediately available in digital format.

Over six million freely accessible film and video items, many of them on historical topics.

Selected film and video items from digitized collections at the Library of Congress.

Online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station GBH.

The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities.

Vintage stock footage and millions of stock photo images comprising one of the largest royalty-free archive footage collections in the world. All broadcast quality and available for immediate download in multiple HD frame rates and codecs, including full resolution screeners. Video clips are licensed royalty-free, worldwide, in perpetuity, for all media; serving the historic footage needs of news, television, and film professionals around the world, 24 hours a day. Specialties include World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, The Cold War, Worldwide Political Figures, Industrialization, Culture, Civil Rights, Transportation, Aviation and Space.

"When Are They Worth a Thousand Words?"

This essay by Po-Yi Hung and Stephen Laubach provides a useful introduction to methods for using images in historical research and history projects. It will help you make the most of the images you use.