Picture Catalogs Online Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress,Washington, DC 20540-4730

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Commercial Sources (a sampler)

Introduction: Scope and Arrangement of the List

A growing number of libraries, archives, and museums offer ready access to their visual materials through Web-based searchable databases that focus on photographs, prints, and drawings. The Prints and Photographs Division, for instance, offers the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), which provides access to a large cross-section of images. Other institutions' databases offer regional and subject strengths that may not be available anywhere else. This list of online picture catalogs will help you find historical, documentary images described and, often, pictured in such databases.

The selection of about 50 catalogs is representative rather than exhaustive.

• It is limited to sites that emphasize online catalogs and finding aids for pictorial collections.
• It highlights databases that cover historical and documentary images in general subject areas, rather than those that focus on a single topic.
• Most have more than 1,000 records and are predominately in the English language.
• Many (not all) include digital images.
• When catalogs include non-pictorial materials, the search screens make it obvious and easy to limit a query to still pictures.

• Web sites based on exhibit and gallery presentations
• commercial sites that sell original prints and photographs
• catalogs that feature art or slide reproductions.

The Library of Congress does not maintain most of these sites. Users should direct concerns about these links to their respective site administrators or webmasters.

Libraries, Archives, and Museums

American Antiquarian Society

Catalog http://www.americanantiquarian.org/library.htm
Limit search to the "Graphic Arts" location to locate thousands of historical prints and numerous photographs.

American Institute of Physics

Emilio Segrè Visual Archives http://www.aip.org/history/esva/
About 5,000 records with digital images from "a collection of some 25,000 historical photographs, slides, lithographs, engravings, and other visual materials."

Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records

Historical Photograph Collection http://photos.lib.az.us/
About 9,000 of 90,000 photographs are digitized and searchable online.

Arkansas History Commission

Photographs http://www.ark-ives.com/photo/index.php
More than 2,000 photographs and digital images.

Bostonian Society

Bostonian Society Online Collections Catalog http://rfi.bostonhistory.org/
Includes 3,000 photographs of Boston street scenes.

British Columbia

Historical Photographs Online http://aabc.bc.ca/aabc/archphot.html
Provides links to databases describing more than 150,000 photographs and documentary art at the British Columbia Archives, City of Vancouver, University of British Columbia, and other repositories. Maintained by the Archives Association of British Columbia.

British Library

Images Online http://www.bl.uk/services/picture.html
Includes many historical illustrations. "Contains images from the Picture Library's existing collection of transparencies as well as new material from manuscripts, maps, music, philately and the Asia, Pacific and Africa collections."

Connecticut Historical Society, with the University of Connecticut and Mystic Seaport

Connecticut History Online http://www.cthistoryonline.org/
About 14,000 images of photographs, drawings, and prints.

Council of Nova Scotia Archives

Archway Photographic Database http://www.councilofnsarchives.ca/ArchwayPhoto/index.htm
Union catalog for photographs in archives throughout Nova Scotia.

Denver Public Library, in partnership with the Colorado Historical Society and the Denver Art Museum

Photography Collection http://photoswest.org/
"Some 95,000 images and catalog records of American Indians, pioneers, railroads, mining, Denver and Colorado towns, city, farm, and ranch life, recreation, scenery, news events, and numerous other subjects and states."

European Visual Archive (EVA)

Search http://192.87.107.12/eva/uk/about.htm
20,000 records and digital images for photographs at the London Metropolitan Archives and Stadsarchief Antwerpen.

Florida State Archives

Florida Memory Project. Florida Photographic Collection http://www.floridamemory.com/PhotographicCollection/
Almost 100,000 records and digital images for photographs are online. The Archives has more than 850,000 photos.

George Eastman House: International Museum of Photography and Film

Photography Collections Online http://www.geh.org/
Offers access by photographer or format, with many digital images. Full catalog is available by telnet.

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Harvard University Library

Visual Information Access (VIA) http://via.harvard.edu:748/html/VIA.html
Union catalog of documentary photographs and slides of art works from many departments, including the Arnold Arboretum, Design School Loeb Library, Fine Arts Museum, Law School, and Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.

Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

Do Research http://www.citymuseumdc.org/Do_Research/index.asp
Select the advanced search screen and limit search to 'photographs.' Includes records for ca. 5,000 photographs.

Indiana Historical Society

Digital Image Collections http://www.indianahistory.org/library/digital_image/digitalpics.html
About 1,000 photos, prints, and postcards.

Kentuckiana Digital Library

Search http://www.kyvl.org/kentuckiana/digilibcoll/introcoll.shtml
Include the word "photographs" in your searches of the finding aids. Contains many photographs from the University of Kentucky Audio-Visual Archives and other contributors.

Library of Congress

PPOC (Prints and Photographs Online Catalog) catalog.html
Includes 500,000 records for 6 million pictures, with 1 million digital images. Total collections number close to 14 million items

Photos and Prints in American Memory http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/collections/finder.html
Includes ca. 50 pictorial collections from the Chicago Historical Society, Duke University, North Dakota State University, and other contributors, as well as the Library of Congress.

Photographs and Prints in Global Gateway. Meeting of Frontiers. http://international.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfdigcol/mfdigcol.html
Includes ca. 20 collections from the Russian State Library and other repositories in Russia

Library of Virginia

Photographic Collections http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whatwehave/photo/index.htm
Provides links to digitized photographs relating to Virginia history from several public libraries as well as the state library.

Maryland Historical Society

Photograph Collections http://www.mdhs.org/explore/library/photo_collections.html
Searches online guides and finding aids, with selected digital images.

Maryland State Archives

Guide to the Photographic Collections http://speccol.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/speccol/catalog/cfm/dsp_photos.cfm
Searches collection and series-level descriptions, with selected digital images.

Minnesota Historical Society

Visual Resources Database http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresources/
More than 150,000 records for photographs, art works, and posters, with many digital images. Collections contain 250,000 items.

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Nagasaki University Library

Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Period http://oldphoto.lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/unive/
About 5,000 items with digital images, 1860-1899.

National Archives and Records Administration

Archival Research Catalog http://www.archives.gov/research_room/arc/index.html
Limit search to "photographs" or "Still Picture Branch" to focus on pictorial materials. Covers 3,000 still picture series and more than 30 architectural and engineering drawing series, including digital image reproductions of more than 50,000 pictorial items.

National Archives of Canada

ArchiviaNet. Documentary Art http://www.archives.ca/02/020116_e.html
More than 150,000 records for drawings, paintings, and caricatures; with 5,000 digital images. Collections hold ca. 275,000 items.

ArchiviaNet. Photographs http://www.archives.ca/02/020115_e.html
400,000 records for photographs; with 10,000 digital images. Collections have more than 22 million photographs.

National Library of Australia

Picture Australia http://www.pictureaustralia.org/
Union catalog with more than 600,000 records and digital images from 25 archives, libraries, and museums in Australia. The two largest contributors are the state libraries of New South Wales and Victoria.

National Library of Medicine

Images from the History of Medicine http://wwwihm.nlm.nih.gov/
Nearly 60,000 "portraits, pictures of institutions, caricatures, genre scenes, and graphic art in a variety of media, illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine."

New Orleans Public Library

Louisiana Division Photograph Collection http://nutrias.org/~nopl/photos/photolist.htm
Includes keyword search access to finding aids for photographic collections and selected digital images.

New York Public Library

Picture Collection Online http://digital.nypl.org/mmpco/
"30,000 digitized images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923."

Northern Arizona University

Special Collections and Archives Image Database http://www.nau.edu/library/speccoll/imagedb.html
The catalog has ca. 5,000 digital images. The photo archive finding guide describes all 700,000 photographs in The Cline Library Special Collections and Archives Department.

Ohio Historical Society

Ohio Pix http://www.ohiohistory.org/etcetera/exhibits/ohiopix/index.cfm
More than 1,000 selected digital images of prints and photographs.

Online Archive of California

Images http://www.oac.cdlib.org/search.image.html
Use the 'images' search screen to locate tens of thousands of photographs, paintings, and other graphic materials.

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Princeton University

Graphic Arts. Catalogs, Databases, and Finding Aids http://www.princeton.edu/~rbsc/databases/graphicarts.html
Provides links to the Visuals Database (15,000 records for prints, drawings, photographs), the Cruikshank Database, and more.

Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network (SCRAN)

Search http://www.scran.ac.uk/
Union catalog for more than 1 million items in museums and archives, including digital images. The free search service allows access to thumbnail images.

Science and Society Picture Library (England)

Search http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/piclib/index.asp
Thousands of digital images from the National Museum of Science and Industry; National Museum of Photography, Film and Television; and the National Railway Museum.

Smithsonian Institution

SIRIS (Smithsonian Institution Research Information System) http://www.siris.si.edu/
The "Archival, Manuscript, and Photographic Collections" catalog includes records for more than 100,000 photographs and many digital images from the Archives Center (National Museum of American History); Archives of American Art; Archives of American Gardens; Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (National Museum of African Art); Archives Center (Freer Gallery of Art / Arthur M. Sackler Gallery); National Air & Space Museum Archives; National Anthropological Archives; and Smithsonian Institution Archives.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Photographs Search http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/
More than 1,000 records and digital images for many individual photographs.

University of California, Berkeley

Bancroft Library. Digital Image Catalog http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CalHeritage
More than 30,000 records. "Digital representations of photographs, pictures, and manuscripts related to California history from the collections of the Bancroft Library that are a part of the California Heritage Digital Image Access Project."

University of Michigan

Bentley Historical Library. Bentley Image Bank. http://www.umich.edu/~bhl/
More than 4,000 records and images, with links to finding aids with additional pictures.

UM Image Source http://images.umdl.umich.edu/i/image/all
Lists databases with pictorial images from many university departments, including local history collections, visual arts resources, and zoology.

University of Texas Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

Photography Collections http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/photography/
Use the "search" feature to access selected descriptions from the ca. 5 million prints and negatives at the Center.

University of Virginia

Digital Publications and Texts http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/online_res/digital.html
Lists catalogs for photographs related to Virginia and African American education, such as the Holsinger Studio and Jackson Davis Collections.

University of Washington Libraries

Digital Collections http://content.lib.washington.edu/
More than 25,000 photographs and posters.

Utah State Historical Society

Digital Library Collections http://history.utah.gov/Photos/C275/
Lists databases with more than 10,000 digitized photographs.

Washington State University. Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections

Historical Photographs http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/holland/masc/mascphoto.htm#guides
Includes guides to individual collections as well as an online catalog to search for images of digitized photographs.

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Images http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/index.asp
Catalog with several thousand images from the ca. 2 million pictures in the Visual Materials Collections, with new images added daily.

Commercial Sources (a sampler)

Alta Vista. Image Search feature.
http://www.altavista.com/image/default

Sells reproductions of photos, prints, and posters for home an d commercial display

Corbis Digital Pictures
http://www.corbis.com/

Includes the historical Bettmann Archive, UPI picture library, and contemporary stock photography.

Getty Images Creative. "Images" http://creative.gettyimages.com/

Includes contemporary stock photography and images from such sources as National Geographic and Time Life Pictures. Almost 250,000 images are at the Hulton Archive site: http://www.hultonarchive.com/

Google. Image search
http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab;=wi&ie;=UTF-8

New Yorker. Cartoons
http://www.cartoonbank.com/

Sells reproductions of more than 85,000 single-panel cartoons, including all cartoons ever published in The New Yorker.

Research Libraries Group
Trove.net™: http://www.trove.net

Content includes all unrestricted collections from RLG Cultural Materials (a subscription service), available without subscription in a low resolution, watermarked form. Supporting the greater visibility of the material to general Web users, items in Trove.net™ are discoverable by any Web user through Internet search engines.

Prepared by: Helena Zinkham, Technical Services Section, July 2003.