LibGuides: Finding and Using Visual Resources: Images Databases and Resources

Art and Cultural Resources

Select Image Databases

More image collections can be found on the Databases & Other Catalogs page.

Reed Digital Collections
An ever-growing database of over 200,000 works of art, photographs, maps, theses, videos, and other primary source and archival documents. Content is generated from the Reed College Special Collections & Archives, the Visual Resource Center, and from academic departments across campus
ARTstor
Interdisciplinary digital library of images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences
Oxford Art Online
A comprehensive resource on art including Grove Art Online and our Oxford art reference subscriptions and publications.

Images from books and articles

Books are sometimes the only place to find an image. To search the library catalog for books with images, the following strategies are good to try:

search for 'ill' or 'illus' as a keyword (both are abbreviations for 'illustrations')
search for 'pictorial' or 'illustrations' as a subject term

Similarly, many article databases allow you to limit your search to articles containing images or to sort your search result to highlight articles containing images.

Humanities Abstracts is an example of a multi-disciplinary database that allows you to search specifically for articles containing images. Enter your search terms and then enter 'illustration,' selecting 'Physical Description' in the dropdown menu.

JSTOR is an example of a multi-disciplinary database that allows you to sort your search results to highlight articles containing images.

Fashion & design

VADS Art, fashion design and textiles.

Berg Fashion Library Includes the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion as well as content from other electronic books and journals related to dress and fashion. Also includes images from V&A Museum's internationally renowned fashion collection and other sources.

Victoria & Albert Museum: Fashion, Jewellery and Accessories European fashion from the 17th century to the present.

Vogue Archive Index to articles, images and advertisements in Vogue.

The Costume Institute: Metropolitan Museum of Art The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-five thousand costumes and accessories represents five continents and seven centuries of fashionable dress, regional costumes, and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

News & pop culture

ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Full text of historical newspapers, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe. Also includes historical black newspapers including the Chicago Defender, the Los Angeles Sentinel, the New York Amsterdam News, and the Pittsburgh Courier. Coverage varies but generally starts in the 1800s. Issues include the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images in easily downloadable PDF format.
Victorian Popular Culture (1779 - 1930)
Covers popular entertainment in America, Britain and Europe in the period from 1779 to 1930, including magic shows, vaudeville, and circuses.

Other Online Resources

Life Photo Archive Photographs from the Life Magazine photo archive (most of which were never published) from the 1750s to today.

Duke Digital Collections The Advertising and Consumer Culture collections cover American advertising from the 1850s through the 1950s.