Otis College LibGuides: Finding Images and Videos: Media Resources on the Web

General Interest

Images available through public websites.

Note restrictions on reuse. Many of them use Creative Commons licenses as a "free, simple, and standardized way to grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works; ensure proper attribution; and allow others to copy, distribute, and make use of those works." (creativecommons.org)

Creative Commons Search
A "one stop shop" for searching multiple types of creative commons media.
Europeana
A single access point to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe. It is an authoritative source of information coming from European cultural and scientific institutions.

FLICKR Creative Commons Photos This link opens in a new window
Cultural heritage institutions share photographs from their collections
Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive This link opens in a new window
The Internet Archive also contains still image collections, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to NASA to book illustrations. Images from scanned books are also available here: Internet Archive Book Images on Flickr
A library containing thousands of digital movies which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.
See also: Internet Archive Book Images on Flickr

OpenGLAM
Portal to Open Access collections with images completely in the public domain.
VADS
Over 100,000 images available for educational use.

Wikimedia Commons This link opens in a new window
Serves images and other media for Wikipedia. Some hi-res images from the Google Art Project are also available here.

Art and Art History

Artsy
Art and artists from museums, galleries, fairs, and auctions worldwide.
Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona Libraries
An archive and research center at the University of Arizona which retains the archives of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Garry Winogrand, Harry Callahan, and other great twentieth-century photographers.
Contemporary Art Library
Documentation of contemporary art. Includes more than 390,000 images, documents and videos representing more than 13,200 exhibitions, performances and other projects
Luna Commons
Over 300,000 images of maps, fine arts, architecture and photography from renowned private and public collections
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Formerly known as the Cartography Associates Visual Collections. Not available as HTTPS
Google Arts & Culture
Images from collections around the world. You can even navigate within some galleries using "museum view."
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Also known as Google Cultural Institute and Google Art Project
Web Gallery of Art
Survey site with a focus on Renaissance European painting and sculpture
World Images
Survey site of art historical images, produced by San Jose State University
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Not available via HTTPS

Architecture and Landscape

SAH Archipedia
Open-access edition of the peer-reviewed online encyclopedia that tells the history of the U.S. through its structures and places. Produced by the Society of Architecture Historians (SAH) and the University of Virginia Press.
Archnet
Archnet is a globally-accessible, intellectual resource focused on architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation issues related to the Muslim world. Archnet’s mission is to provide ready access to unique visual and textual material to facilitate teaching, scholarship, and professional work of high quality.
Built in America
The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) from the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, and part of American Memory.
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Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey, 1933-Present
Catena: Digital Archive of Historic Gardens & Landscapes
A searchable collection of historic and contemporary images that include plans, engravings, paintings, and photographs of historic gardens and landscapes.
The City Project
Flickr photostream for Los Angeles based City Project
Digital Imaging Project
Images of architecture, historical sites, and more taken by Professor Mary Sullivan at Bluffton U. (Some large, some not.)
Great Buildings Collection
Images, architectural drawings, 3D building models, commentaries, and bibliographies of a thousand buildings selected over ten years by the editors of ArchitectureWeek.
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Not available via HTTPS
Street Art
Nearly 10,000 images from around the world. Great for murals. Part of the Google Art Project
Structurae
International database and gallery of structures, with over 150,000 images of 60,000 structures.

Printing and Books Arts

Bookbindings
Fine and historical bookbindings. Produced by the British Library.
CSPG: The Center for the Study of Political Graphics
Educational and research archive that collects, preserves, documents, and exhibits posters relating to historical and contemporary movements for social change
Papyrology Collection
The University of Michigan has made its large collection of papyrus fragments available digitally. Search it using the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS)
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Formerly known as the Papyrus Collection

Related guides:

Advertising and Photography

Ad*Access Project
The Ad*Access Project, funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.
AdFlip
Commercial database of classic advertisements
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2020: may no longer be in service
Adforum Creative Library
Database of over 180,000 commercials. May require registration.

Finding Artists and Designers of Color

Check out our new research guide Finding Diverse Artists and Designers

Decentering Whiteness in Design History Resources
Collaborative bibliography meant to help instructors of design history decenter whiteness in their classes
Artsy: The Art Genome Project
Search artsy.net by over 1,000 topics such as "Engaged with Contemporary Chinese Art" or "African Diaspora". Focuses on the current art gallery and auction markets
BIPOC Artists and Designers Resource Collection
Created by faculty at Parsons, it is an extensive, and ongoing live document of BIPOC Artists & Designers organized by disciplines as follows: Visual Art, Fashion, System Designs, Socially Engaged Projects, & Constructed Environments
#FromMarginToCenter Initiative
Highlights contemporary artists and designers across a broad range of identities. Developed by the Ricker Library of Architecture and Art at UIUC.
Image of the Black in Western Art
Research project and photo archive begun in the 1960s as a response to segregation in the United States by influential art patron Dominique de Menil. Now under the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University
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Some pring voumes are in Library's copllection. Image archive on ARTstor is restricted access
Japanese American National Museum (JANM) Collections Online
Search the museum's collection
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Not available as HTTPS
National Museum of the American Indian: Collections Search
Search over 132,000 objects in the museum's collections.
People of Color in European Art History
Static Resources page with links to many resources on BIPOC as subjects and creators throughout history
Secondary Archive
Web-based platform documenting information about women artists from central and east Europe, from the 1930s through the present.

Los Angeles-area Collections and Museums

Many museums are opening their digital images for research on their web sites. Here are some local collections that are easy to search.

Autry Museum of the American West
Includes records and images for over 50,000 items
The Broad Collection
Over 2,000 images of their collection
The Getty Museum
Nearly 100,000 images freely available for use.
Huntington Art Collections
There is a separate search for the Huntington Digital Library
Japanese American National Museum (JANM)
Collection of over 60,000 unique artifacts, documents, and photographs
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Not available as HTTPS
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Documents their collection, including over 22,000 images in the public domain
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA LA)
Browse their collections as well as their exhibition archive.
Norton Simon Museum
Over 4,000 images of European masterworks and South and Southeast Asian art

Other Museums

Many museums are opening their digital images for research on their web sites. Here are some of the most innovative collection searches.

Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections
Created by the Museum Computer Network (MCN) in March 2020 in response to COVID-19. Contains links to many of the resources on this page.
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Joint venture between the Library of Congress and WGBH in Boston.
Cooper Hewitt Design Museum
Fantastic place to search for images. Most images not available for reuse, but a great place to explore ideas. Can search on many terms, including color
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Over 215,000 images in the public domain from their collection.
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Over 77,000 works available from their collection of 200,000 objects
MoMA Through Time
Timeline showing the history of the Museum of Modern Art as told by objects in its collections.
Rijksmuseum
Over 200,000 images available for use. Some of the images are not available, due to copyright restrictions.
Smithsonian Collections Search Center
Search over 13.5 million records of museum objects, archives and library materials including more than 3.1 million online images, audio & videos and blog posts
Victoria and Albert Museum
Online access to over a million catalog records and over half a million images of objects in their collections

Libraries

Digital Public Library of America This link opens in a new window
The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. Many books and images available.

Or search by institution, including:

Calisphere
More than 200,000 digitized items (photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, etc.) that reflect the diverse history of California. Collections support California Content Standards, including primary sources sets.
Library of Congress Digitial Collections
Hundreds of collections from the Library of Congress, concerning all aspects of the history of the United States.
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American Memory Project
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Over 600,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities--illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, fashion plates, and other printed ephemera
Tessa: Digital Collections at the Los Angeles Public Library
Access rare and historical collections of photographs, posters, and more.

Experimental and Video Art

Rhizome
Online community for born-digital art. Offers free, open-source, and broadly applicable software for born-digital art and culture, with a digital preservation focus.
Saving Internet Art
Project by Rhizome and Google Arts and Culture, resources for preserving digital art and internet history
UBU Web FIlm and Video
Watch videos by well-known artists on UBU. The site about the avant-garde and outsider arts also contains much more material including documents, music and radio interviews.
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Not available via HTTPS
Video Data Bank
Archive of video art and includes free clips. Some items are cataloged in our video collection and/or in Kanopy.

Film and Television

Searching Multiple Streaming Services

Find out where a specific title is available on a particular platform.

For titles in the public domain, search the Internet Archive, OpenGlam, and Google (or other search engine.)

Just Watch
Search across multiple streaming services for titles, including Kanopy and Hoopla.
Reelgood
Best place to find out where a mainstream film or television show is streaming

Subscription services

Pay a fee to watch (un)limited content on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and even YouTube. Specialized content available on many sites, such as Crunchyroll, The Criterion Channel, MUBI, and Britbox.

May have ads

Network Websites

Many TV networks stream full episodes, previews, webisodes, and extra content directly from their websites, e.g. ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, CW, Fox, NBC, and TNT. Most include short commercial breaks. TV episodes are also available for sale from other sites, e.g. iTunes and Amazon Video on Demand, or from subscription services, e.g. Netflix and Hulu.

May have ads

Databases

MovieClips
Contains official clips from popular movies. Hosted on YouTube, so most clips can be embedded into blogs and websites.

Kanopy Streaming This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Otis subscribes to a small selection of titles. You can access a much larger selection through LAPL. More info

History, Maps, and Anthropology

Appalshop
Art collective about the culture of people living in Appalachia and rural America
British Pathé
85,000 newsreels from 1896-1976 created by British Pathé available on YouTube
Civil Rights Digital Library
Contains a plethora of primary sources, including images, sound and video from the University of Georgia and other collections
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Not available via HTTPS
Fashion History Timeline
Evolving open-access resource for professional, emerging, and casual researchers. Created by faculty and students at the Fashion Institute of Technology
Life Photo Archive
A digital collection of millions of photographs from LIFE magazine from 1750s to today.
NASA Images
Public access to NASA's image, video, and audio collections in a single, searchable resource. Also check out Visible Earth
The Peoples of the World Foundation
Non-profit site dedicate to photoethnography and visual anthropology
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Not available via HTTPS
Historical Anatomies on the Web
The National Libraries of Medicine has posted excellent images from many antique books on anatomy.
Photogrammar
Search photographs from the Farm Services Administration (FSA-OWI) that are housed in the Library of Congress.
Screen Archive Fashion
Thematic guide to 1920s-1930s UK fashion and dress via film archive
Selections from the National Film Registry
Project of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

Stock Photography and Royalty-Free Images

Look for resources created under either a completely unrestricted use license, or a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, meaning that you can download, use, manipulate, share, distribute, or otherwise use them for whatever purpose you'd like without permission. It is strongly recommended that you credit the creator(s) of the image, but it is not necessary.

Unsplash
Beautiful, free photographs published on Unsplash for you to use for free. Can be used for commercial or noncommercial purposes.
Fotosearch
Stock photography and footage. Images may be licensed for certain uses. READ the terms of use.
Morguefile
Free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use
nappy
Beautiful, high-resolution photographs of black and brown people, available under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
The Noun Project
Over 1 million royalty-free icons
Open Clip Art
Clip art images available for downloading and remixing; all images are in the public domain
Open Photo
Moderated photo community with the goal of uniting image consumers and producers through friendly Creative Commons licensing. (Royalty-free images, many of which are free.)
Pexels
Free stock photography. Images can be downloaded at custom sizes. Also has videos.
Picsearch
Images available for licensing. READ terms of use.
Pixabay
Over 1.2 million images and videos, available for completely free use under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
Smithsonian Open Access
Explore and reuse millions of digital assets—2D and 3D images and data—from the Smithsonian's collections and released into the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license

Data Visualization and Infographics

Daily Infographic
A curated selection of infographics from a variety of sources.
Information is Beautiful
The name really says it all.
Visual Complexity
Visualization examples across multiple disciplines.
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Not available via HTTPS

Related Guide:

Infographics

Music and Audio

ccMixter
ccMixter is a community site featuring remixes of muxic licensed under Creative Commons. You can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want. Free.
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Not available via HTTPS
Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
UC Santa Barbara has been digitzing music cyclinders published between 1894-early 1920s. The music is in the public domain and files are published with a CC Attribution 2.5 license. Free.
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Not available by HTTPS
Freesound
Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse.
mobygratis
The artist Moby has made his music available for "independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short." Free, but registration required.
opsound
Opsound is a gift economy in action, an experiment in applying the model of free software to music. Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the Opsound pool using a copyleft license developed by Creative Commons. Listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine.
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2020: May no longer be available
USC Optical Sound Effects Library
Sound effects created by Sunset Editorial mainly for televisions shows from 1964 to 1987. Hosted on the Internet Archive. Read Chris Smith's blog post for more information.