Image Collections Online: Collections Accessible through Columbia Libraries

Key Online Image Collections

IconAP Images. (EBSCO)
The Associated Press archive contains photographs from 1844 to the present, includes images, audio files of radio broadcasts, text of wire stories, and info-graphics.  To see a larger image, click on the title of the entry.

IconArtstor. (Artstor)
This is the largest of the searchable databases of art and architecture images with their associated catalog data.  New image collections added several times a year. ARTstor covers many time periods and cultures, and documents not only the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design, but it also covers anthropology, ethnographic and women's studies, and many other forms of visual culture. Users can search, view, download and organize images. ARTstor database can be searched by Keyword or users can do an Advanced Search by Creator, Title, Location, Repository, Subject, Material, Style or Period, Work Type, Culture, Description, Technique, and Number.  
To download individual images, one must have and enable Java in the web browser one is using. At this time, Java is the only solution to downloading a single image. Without Java, one option may be to create an image group with multiple images and export that image group to PowerPoint. Please see the ARTSTOR section called "Presenting with Other Tools" to show how to export to PowerPoint.

IconAskART academic. (AskArt)
A database of information about American artists, including names, birth and death dates, state or local affiliation, fields in which artist worked, book and periodical references to artist, dealers and museums where works may be viewed, auction prices of works, some biographical details, and some examples of their work.  Aims at being an unbiased source of information about the commercial value of each artist's work through a comprehensive system of comparables. 

IconCAMIO. (Worldcat)
CAMIO covers images of art from antiquity to the present, including photographs, sculpture, decorative and utilitarian objects, prints, drawings and watercolors, jewelry and costumes, textiles, books, installations, and architecture - plus audio-video and mixed media.  Some images here do NOT appear in ArtStor.

Library of Congress. American memory: historical collections for the National Digital Library.
American Memory is a gateway to the Library of Congress’ resources of digitized American historical materials. The collection documents U.S. history and culture, it is organized into thematic collections. The original formats include manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. Collections may be browsed individually, searched individually (including full-text searching for many written items), or searched across multiple collections.

Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs (P&P) online catalog.
Contains catalog records and digital images representing a cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and other units of the Library of Congress. Provides access through group or item records to about half of the Division's holdings.The database provides searchable access to digitized photographs, prints, and drawings.  Subjects and formats strongly represented by digital images include: the American Civil War; the Great Depression and World War II; architectural documentation for historic structures in the U.S.; historical photographs of the Middle East and Russia; baseball; history of flight; Lewis Hine's child labor photographs; political, theater, and WPA posters; editorial cartoons; and fine prints, especially by U.S. and Japanese artists.

NYPL digital collections. (New York Public Library)
This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. Includes: Photographic views of New York City, 1870s-1970s; Mid-Manhattan Picture Collection, Print Collection Portrait File, and many, many others.

NYC Municipal Archives online gallery.
The New York City Municipal Archives online gallery includes over images, selected from the historical collections of the Archives. Explore and search the collections individually, or across all collections by keyword or any of the advanced search criteria. The gallery includes many complete collections; for others, only representative samples are currently on display.  

IconOxford art online.
Search by IMAGE.  Oxford Art Online provides access to Grove Art Online, Benezit Dictionary of Artists, The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art. It includes image partnerships with ARTstor, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Images for College Teaching, Art Resource, Artists Rights Society and numerous international art galleries and artists.

IconPrometheus : das verteilte digitale Bildarchiv für Forschung & Lehre. [To get in, click on the "Campus Login" below the individual name/password option]
Digitized images from the fields of arts, culture and history. prometheus is a distributed digital image archive that currently connects 94 databases from institutes, research facilities and museums on a common user interface. Situated at the Institute of Art History of the University of Cologne.

RIBApix = Royal Institute of British Architects pictures. (Royal Institute of British Architects. Library Photograph Collection) 
RIBApix is a database of images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects. RIBApix covers world architecture of all periods together with related subjects such as interior design, landscape, topography, planning, construction and the decorative arts. 

Art Images: Worldwide Coverage

IconA&AePortal (Art & Architecture e-Portal). (Yale University Pr.)
Online collection of key backlist and out-of-print scholarly works in the fields of art and architectural history published by: The Art Institute of Chicago, the MIT Press, Yale University Press, Harvard Art Museums and Yale University Art Gallery. The portal allows the user to browse all images (by artist, title or date).

IconArtstor. (Artstor)
This is the largest of the searchable databases of art and architecture images with nearly 2,000,000 images with their associated catalog data.  New image collections added several times a year. ARTstor covers many time periods and cultures, and documents not only the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design, but it also covers anthropology, ethnographic and women's studies, and many other forms of visual culture. Users can search, view, download and organize images. ARTstor database can be searched by Keyword or users can do an Advanced Search by Creator, Title, Location, Repository, Subject, Material, Style or Period, Work Type, Culture, Description, Technique, and Number.  
To download individual images, one must have and enable Java in the web browser one is using. At this time, Java is the only solution to downloading a single image. Without Java, one option may be to create an image group with multiple images and export that image group to PowerPoint. Please see the ARTSTOR section called "Presenting with Other Tools" to show how to export to PowerPoint.

Art resource. (Art Resource Firm)
A digital image archive, this resource contains images from prehistoric times to the present. It includes images of works of painting, sculpture, architecture and the minor arts from the world's major museums, monuments, and commercial archives. Art Resource carries works of many major museum in Europe, and functions as the official rights and permissions representative for many institutions in the United States and abroad. Art Resource is a fine art stock photo archive, licensing authorized images to all media.  This free resource requires individual registration. Regarded as a fine art stock licensing site.

Artsy. (Artsy)
Artsy features the world's leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions. The growing database of art, architecture, and design spans historical, modern, and contemporary works.

emuseum.  (New York : emuseum)
emuseum offers data about and links to objects from 72 museums and galleries mostly from North America and images from their collections.

Getty search gateway. (Getty)
The Getty Search Gateway allows users to search across several of the Getty repositories, collections databases, library catalogs, collection inventories, and archival finding aids in the four Getty programs: the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. Users can use the tool to browse the collections broadly, by type of resource (i.e., paintings, books, archives), or to search directly for assets related to very specific subjects:  historical periods, artists, object types, etc.

IconOxford art online. (Oxford University Pr.)
Search by IMAGE.  Oxford Art Online provides access to Grove Art Online, Benezit Dictionary of Artists, The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art. It includes image partnerships with ARTstor, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Images for College Teaching, Art Resource, Artists Rights Society and numerous international art galleries and artists.

IconPrometheus : das verteilte digitale Bildarchiv für Forschung & Lehre. [To get in, click on the "Campus Login" below the individual name/password option]
Digitized images from the fields of arts, culture and history. Prometheus is a distributed digital image archive that currently connects 94 databases from institutes, research facilities and museums on a common user interface. Situated at the Institute of Art History of the University of Cologne.

Ukiyo-e search. [English version]
The Ukiyo-e.org database and image similarity analysis engine, created by John Resig to aide researchers in the study of Japanese woodblock prints, was launched in December 2012. The database currently contains prints from 24 institutions.

VADS : the online resource for visual arts. (University for the Creative Arts)
VADS is the online resource for visual arts. It has provided services to the academic community for 11 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in teaching, learning and research in the UK. Images include fine arts, photography, decorative arts, furniture, fashion, design, posters, and more. 

Warburg Institute Iconographic Database.
Online database includes catalog of the Warburg Institute's Photographic Collection.  Images are still being added.  Includes tens of thousands of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographs and slides begun by Aby Warburg, together with hundreds of thousands of images added since the Institute came to London in 1933.

Art Images: European and United Kingdom Coverage (Mostly)

IconA&AePortal (Art & Architecture e-Portal). (Yale University Pr.)
Online collection of key backlist and out-of-print scholarly works in the fields of art and architectural history published by: The Art Institute of Chicago, the MIT Press, Yale University Press, Harvard Art Museums and Yale University Art Gallery. The portal allows the user to browse all images (by artist, title or date).

Agence photographique.  (Réunion des musées nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées)
Created by the Réunion des musées nationaux and Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées, the Agence photographique is a catalog of online photographs of artistic works collected in the national and regional museums of France. The number of images available on this site, is not stated.

Art UK (formerly "Your paintings." (BBC; Public Catalogue Foundation)
This database aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings. Search or browse by painting, artist and or collection. With guided tours, and the ability to tag paintings. A joint initiative between the BBC and the Public Catalogue Foundation.

Arthistoricum.net. (Dresden : Saxon State and University Library)
Other Title: Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Kunstgeschichte = Virtual catalogue for art history = Bibliothèque virtuelle de l'histoire de l'art.
Arthistoricum.net offers online access to search engines, union catalogs, e-publications, research tutorials, subject bibliographies for online resources, and primary source materials related to the study of European art history from the Early Christian era up to the present.  This resource has the following image databases: Worker Photography. -- Architectural Drawings. --  Archiv der Fotografen. -- British Illustrations. -- Deutsche Fotothek. -- Color slide archive of wall and ceiling painting. -- French caricatures. -- GDK-Research. -- Janke Archive. -- Caricatures and illustrations from Fliegende Blätter Kartenforum. -- Art Encounters. -- Miniatures from the Bibliotheca Palatina. -- GDR Furniture Design. -- Der Simpl: Art – Caricature – Criticism. -- Virtuelles Kupferstichkabinett.

Beazley Archive. (Univ. of Oxford. Classical Art Research Centre)
This database offers photographs, notes, drawings, etc. on ancient Greek and Roman art including pottery, gems, sculpture, and plaster sculptures.

Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur. (Bildarchiv foto Marburg)
With images on art and architecture from 13 European countries, this image database is designed for research, teaching and editorial inquiries. Images have been collected from some 80 partners. This photo archive sells its images for publication.

British Library online gallery.  (British Library)
Virtual books, online exhibitions, photographs and images from the British library, including sacred texts, maps, and historical documents.

British Museum Collection Database. (British Museum)
Other Title: Collection database search
Presents digitized pictures and records of two-dimensional works held by the British Museum. Eventually images of all the collections will be included.

IconCAMIO. (Worldcat)
CAMIO covers images of art from antiquity to the present, including photographs, sculpture, decorative and utilitarian objects, prints, drawings and watercolors, jewelry and costumes, textiles, books, installations, and architecture - plus audio-video and mixed media. Some images here do NOT appear in ArtStor.

Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known to the Renaissance. (Institute for Art History at the Humboldt-University Berlin)
This interdisciplinary research database contains documentation centering on the reception of antiquity, a focus of Renaissance studies. the collection registers antique monuments known in the Renaissance together with the related Renaissance documents in the form of texts and images, and information about locations, persons and periods as well as bibliographic data.

CLAROS. (Beazley Archive)
CLAROS  is an international research collaboration, covering the art of ancient Greece and Rome.  Images on the site are primarily of pottery and sculpture.

Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. (Beazley Archive)
Digitized copies of volumes from the corpus of antique vases held in collections worldwide.  The project is on-going; new fascicles are being published and participating museums have the opportunity to contribute to the on-line database.

Europeana.  (The Hague : Europeana.eu)
Europeana.eu is a digital library which includes images, texts, audio and video, from European museums, galleries, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections.  It includes image collections, videos, sound, and text well beyond the field of art history, for example: film, music, culture, social sciences, architecture.

Geograph British Isles. [Free electronic resource] (London? : Ordnance Survey)
The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of the UK and the Republic of Ireland through crowdsourcing.

Google arts and culture.
Digital images of art works selected from museums in the U.S. and Europe, with information about the work, videos, artist's biographical information, and museum information. Viewers can browse the collections by exhibition rooms, works, or artists. Includes virtual gallery tours of participating museums, educational videos, ability to create own gallery of images, zoom in on these images and share. All works from the Google Art Project are available on Wikimedia Commons, except for photos of three-dimensional works or works still under copyright. Site constantly being updated.

National Gallery of Art. Image Collections. (National Gallery of Art)
The library's department of image collections is a study and research center for images of Western art and architecture and is one of the largest of its kind.

National Gallery of Art. NGA Images.  (National Gallery of Art)
NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download images. A standards-based reproduction guide and a help section provide advice for both novices and experts. Many images offer up to 3000 pixels per image and are available free of charge for download and use. NGA Images is designed to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration.

National Portrait Gallery.  (National Portrait Gallery)
Features  images from the National Portrait Gallery in London, England, founded in 1856 to collect the likenesses of famous British men and women. Images are searchable by artist, sitter, and portrait name.

IconPrometheus : das verteilte digitale Bildarchiv für Forschung & Lehre. [To get in, click on the "Campus Login" below the individual name/password option]
Digitized images from the fields of arts, culture and history. prometheus is a distributed digital image archive that currently connects 94 databases from institutes, research facilities and museums on a common user interface. Situated at the Institute of Art History of the University of Cologne.

Royal collection online. (Royal Collection Trust)
Contains records about objects in the Royal Collection, many of which are represented online. These records form a working database that we are improving and expanding on a regular basis. Some records currently have minimal information, while others present a more comprehensive view. Some records are illustrated with professional photography, while others are accompanied by more basic images or no images at all. The database is updated regularly with new and improved images and text.

[Victoria & Albert Museum Image Collections ] = V&A search the collections. (Victoria & Albert Museum)
Contains objects from the V&A's collections. The database covers a wide range of items, including ceramics, fashion, furniture, glass, metalwork, paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture, and textiles.

Warburg Institute Iconographic Database.
Online database includes catalog of the Warburg Institute's Photographic Collection.  Images are still being added.  Includes tens of thousands of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographs and slides begun by Aby Warburg, together with hundreds of thousands of images added since the Institute came to London in 1933.

Web gallery of art. (Budapest : EuroWeb)
Contains digital reproductions of European paintings and sculptures created between the years 1150 and 1800. Biographies, commentaries, guided tours are available.

Art Images: United States Coverage

Digital culture of metropolitan New York. (Metropolitan New York Library Council)
DCMNY provides online access to digital collections of libraries, archives, museums and historical societies located in and around New York City. Participating institutions are located in the following counties of New York State: Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, and Westchester. The collections include photographs, maps, letters, postcards, manuscripts, scrapbooks, programs from events, catalogues, memorabilia and ephemera, and much more
.

Digital Library Collections.  (Columbia University Libraries)
The Digital Library Collections (DLC) website is a gateway to digital reproductions and descriptions of photographs, posters, drawings, objects, ephemera, and manuscripts as well as other archival material from Columbia's rare and special collections. It will continue to grow as more of our earlier digital projects are loaded in, as more of our special collections are digitized and described, and as hybrid and born-digital archival collections are acquired.

Google arts and culture.
Digital images of art works selected from museums in the U.S. and Europe, with information about the work, videos, artist's biographical information, and museum information. Viewers can browse the collections by exhibition rooms, works, or artists. Includes virtual gallery tours of participating museums, educational videos, ability to create own gallery of images, zoom in on these images and share. All works from the Google Art Project are available on Wikimedia Commons, except for photos of three-dimensional works or works still under copyright. Site constantly being updated.

National Gallery of Art. Image Collections. (National Gallery of Art)
The library's department of image collections is a study and research center for images of Western art and architecture and is one of the largest of its kind.

National Gallery of Art. NGA Images.  (National Gallery of Art)
NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download images. A standards-based reproduction guide and a help section provide advice for both novices and experts. Many images offer up to 3000 pixels per image and are available free of charge for download and use. NGA Images is designed to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration.

NYPL digital collections. (New York Public Library)
This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. Includes: Photographic views of New York City, 1870s-1970s; Mid-Manhattan Picture Collection, Print Collection Portrait File, and many, many others.

Smithsonian Institution.  Collections search center. (Smithsonian Institution)
Database containing primary source materials from the Smithsonian's museums, libraries, and archives, that is: ALL museums and archives under the Smithsonian umbrella of all types and all places.

Artists and their Art

Artcyclopedia: the fine art search engine.  (Calgary, CA : Artcyclopedia; Specifica, Inc.)
Search by artist and the result is a list of museums and galleries with links. Click on links and you may find images and data on works held there. This resource usually has better meta-data than Google.  It has some museums and galleries not found in ArtStor.  Presents a directory of art resources on the Internet, created by John Malyon and searchable by movement, medium, subject, or artist name.

IconAskART academic.
A database of information about American artists, including names, birth and death dates, state or local affiliation, fields in which artist worked, book and periodical references to artist, dealers and museums where works may be viewed, auction prices of works, some biographical details, and some examples of their work.  Aims at being an unbiased source of information about the commercial value of each artist's work through a comprehensive system of comparables. 

VADS = Visual Arts Data Service: the online resource for visual arts.  (University College for the Creative Arts)
VADS is the online resource for visual arts. It has provided services to the academic community for 11 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in teaching, learning and research in the UK. Images include fine arts, photography, decorative arts, furniture, fashion, design, posters, and more. 

 

Architecture, Views and City Scenes

Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson & Burhnam Archives. Archival image & media collection. (Art Institute of Chicago, Reyerson & Burham Archives)
The Ryerson & Burnham Archives collect artists' and architects' papers that complement and extend the permanent collections of the museum's curatorial departments. The Archives' collections are notably strong in late 19th and 20th century American architecture, with particular depth in Midwest, Chicago School, Prairie School and organic architecture.  This digital collection consists of available digital images from all of our general archival collections, including the Chicago Architectural Sketch Club, Historic Architecture and Landscape Image (HALIC) and Magic of America collections. Finding aids for all Ryerson & Burnham archival collections may be browsed and downloaded as PDFs. 

Asian historical architecture.  (Charlottesville : University of Virginia)
Promotes a greater understanding of Asian architecture through images and descriptive text. Offers a photographic survey of Asia's architectural heritage with extensive background information, maps and virtual tours. Includes images from Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, the two Koreas, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, and Thailand.

Biggert Collection of Architectural Vignettes on Commercial Stationery. (Columbia University Libraries)
Contains digital copies of printed ephemera with architectural imagery from 1850-1920, spanning more than 350 cities and towns in forty-five states.

Casselman Archive of Islamic and Mudejar Architecture in Spain (University of Wisconson-Madison Libraries)
Color slides and black and white photographs of medieval Spain taken by the late Eugene Casselman (1912-1996) during his thirty years of travel throughout the Iberian peninsula. The images span over one thousand years of architectural history, from the seventh to the seventeenth century. The majority of the slides focus on the Mudejar style, an ornate court style largely inspired by Spanish Islamic architecture that was shared among Islamic, Jewish, and Christian cultures during the later Middle Ages in Spain.

Digital culture of metropolitan New York. (Metropolitan New York Library Council)
DCMNY provides online access to digital collections of libraries, archives, museums and historical societies located in and around New York City. Participating institutions are located in the following counties of New York State: Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, and Westchester. The collections include photographs, maps, letters, postcards, manuscripts, scrapbooks, programs from events, catalogues, memorabilia and ephemera, and much more
.

Digital Library Collections. (Columbia University Libraries)
The Digital Library Collections (DLC) website is a gateway to digital reproductions and descriptions of photographs, posters, drawings, objects, ephemera, and manuscripts as well as other archival material from Columbia's rare and special collections. It will continue to grow as more of our earlier digital projects are loaded in, as more of our special collections are digitized and described, and as hybrid and born-digital archival collections are acquired.

Geograph British Isles. (Ordnance Survey)
The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of the UK and the Republic of Ireland through crowdsourcing.

Greene & Greene Architectural Records and Papers Collection. (Avery Library, Columbia University)
An online collection guide and image database of architectural designs and drawings by Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, architects of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

Hugh Ferriss Architectural Drawings and Papers Collection. (Avery Library, Columbia University)
This represents all 363 of the original drawings in the Hugh Ferris Collection.

Joseph Urban Stage Design Models and Documents. (Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Columbia University)
This is a collection of digital images of set models, drawings, documents and more for over 260 New York theater and opera productions.  

MCNY collections portal. (Museum of the City of New York)
Access to New York's past through digitized images and objects from the collections of the Museum of the City of New York.

NYPL digital collections. (New York Public Library)
This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. Includes: Photographic views of New York City, 1870s-1970s; Mid-Manhattan Picture Collection, Print Collection Portrait File, and many, many others.

New York Real Estate Brochure Collection. (Avery Library, Columbia University)
A searchable database of thousands of advertising brochures, floor plans, price lists, and more from residential and commercial real estate development in New York City and vicinities from the 1920s to the 1970s.  

NYC Municipal Archives online gallery.
The New York City Municipal Archives online gallery includes images, selected from the historical collections of the Archives. Explore and search the collections individually, or across all collections by keyword or any of the advanced search criteria. The gallery includes many complete collections; for others, only representative samples are currently on display.    

OldNYC : mapping historical photos from the NYPL. (Dan Vanderkam, New York Public Library)
This site provides an alternative way of browsing the NYPL's Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s collection of images by location rather than the meta-data.  The images all come from the New York Public Library's Milstein Collection. The majority of its images are images of the city from the late 1920s to the early 1940s.

RIBApix = Royal Institute of British Architects pictures. (Royal Institute of British Architects. Library Photograph Collection)
RIBApix is a database of images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects. RIBApix covers world architecture of all periods together with related subjects such as interior design, landscape, topography, planning, construction and the decorative arts. 

Seymour B. Durst Old York Library. (Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University)
Website for The Seymour B. Durst Old York Library collection at the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library.  This collection consists of more than 40,000 objects including historic photographs, maps, pamphlets, postcards, books, and New York City memorabilia from the 18th century to the 1980s. 

Visual index to the virtual archive 2. (New York : Skyscraper Museum)
The Visual Index to the Virtual Archive provides access to The Skyscraper Museum's  collection of photographs of the construction of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center towers, including images of the rising structures, workers, machinery, ceremonies, and city scenes.

Social/Historical Photographic Collections

IconAM Explorer. (Adam Matthew Digital)
Adam Matthew has hundreds of archival collections online, many of which include visual material.  This site allows you to search all of them at one time.  To see the list of collections, to go "Restrict search by" below the search boxes, then click on "search by selected products," and a list will open up.

American Geographical Society Library. (University of Wisconsin. Library; New York : American Geographical Society. Library)
The AGS Library's worldwide coverage from the 15th century to the present includes of maps, atlases, books, journals, pamphlets, photographs, slides, Landsat images, and digital spatial data. 

Community Service Society photographs. (Columbia University Libraries)
Community Service Society Photographs is an online presentation of photographs  from the Community Service Society Records at Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The site offers representations of urban poverty, unsafe tenement housing, inadequate hygiene in public areas, and other pressing social issues in late-19th- and early-20th-century New York. The images range from the 1880s through the 1950s.

Digital Library Collections. (Columbia University Libraries)
The Digital Library Collections (DLC) website is a gateway to digital reproductions and descriptions of photographs, posters, drawings, objects, ephemera, and manuscripts as well as other archival material from Columbia's rare and special collections. It will continue to grow as more of our earlier digital projects are loaded in, as more of our special collections are digitized and described, and as hybrid and born-digital archival collections are acquired.

G.E.E. Lindquist Native American Photographs. (Columbia University Libraries)
Photographs, postcards, negatives, and lantern slides from the G.E.E. Lindquist Papers archival collection at The Burke Library. They depict the people, places, and practices of Native Americans and their communities from 1909-1953.

Library of Congress. American memory: historical collections for the National Digital Library. (Library of Congress)
American Memory is a gateway to the Library of Congress’ resources of digitized American historical materials. These resources document U.S. history and culture, it is organized into thematic collections. The original formats include manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. Collections may be browsed individually, searched individually (including full-text searching for many written items), or searched across multiple collections.

Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs (P&P) online catalog. (Library of Congress)
Contains catalog records and digital images representing a cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and other units of the Library of Congress. Provides access through group or item records to about half of the Division's holdings.The database provides searchable access to digitized photographs, prints, and drawings.  Subjects and formats strongly represented by digital images include: the American Civil War; the Great Depression and World War II; architectural documentation for historic structures in the U.S.; historical photographs of the Middle East and Russia; baseball; history of flight; Lewis Hine's child labor photographs; political, theater, and WPA posters; editorial cartoons; and fine prints, especially by U.S. and Japanese artists.

NYPL digital collections. (New York Public Library)
Collection of digitized items from The New York Public Library's collections. This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. Includes: Photographic views of New York City, 1870s-1970s; Mid-Manhattan Picture Collection, Print Collection Portrait File, and many, many others.

Photogrammar. (U.S Farm Service Agency; United States: Office of War Information; Yale University)
Photogrammar is a web-based platform for organizing, searching, and visualizing photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA-OWI).  Access through Geo-Location.

PhotoSeed : bringing to light the growth and artistic vision of 19th & 20th century photography. (David Spencer)
In PhotoSeed, clicking on the Highlights area allows users to browse through photos of British salons in the late 19th century, an Italian Grand Tour album from 1912, and rare from the American photographic journal, "The Photographic Times." The Collection area allows visitors to look through all of the items by photographer, artist, medium, journal, volume, year, atelier, or tag. 

Photojournalism, Commerce and Fashion

Ad*Access. (Duke University)
Presents images of advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Concentrates on five main subject areas: radio, television, transportation, beauty and hygiene, and World War II.

IconAM Explorer. (Adam Matthew Digital)
Adam Matthew has hundreds of archival collections online, many of which include visual material.  This site allows you to search all of them at one time.  To see the list of collections, to go "Restrict search by" below the search boxes, then click on "search by selected products," and a list will open up.

IconAP images. (EBSCO)
Associated Press archive of over photographs from 1844 to the present, includes images, audio files of radio broadcasts, text of wire stories, and info-graphics. 

IconBerg fashion library. (Bloomsbury)
Provides integrated text and image content on world dress and fashion throughout history. Offers cross-searchable access to an expanding range of Berg content collections, including the Encyclopedia of world dress and fashion, e-books, e-journals, museum directory, reference works, images, and more. Browsable by time (1600 to date) and by place (click on world map).

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google. (Time-Life International; Google)
Contains photographs from the LIFE photo archive,  from the 1750s to the present. Many were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

Avery Library

Avery Librarians