Research Guides: Finding and (Re)Using Digital Images and Media: Exploring Digital Archives &amp; Collections

Trico Digital Collections

TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections repository
Digital collections sourced primarily from the Rare Book and Manuscripts and College Archives divisions of Special Collections at Bryn Mawr College; Quaker and Special Collections at Haverford College; Swarthmore College Peace Collection; and Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College. This repository includes manuscript collections, rare books, college archives materials, photo archives, images, college publications, and more.

Other Digital Collections

The following digital collections provide access to a variety of images in the public domain and under copyright. Please check the terms of use and image rights statements for more information.

This is a selected list. For a more extensive list, see University of Minnesota's Image Collections Guide by subject.

American Memory, The Library of Congress
American Memory provides free and open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
Brooklyn Museum Online Collections
Brooklyn Museum's digital gallery contains over 90,000 digitized images from its collections. Users can browse, save, research, comment and tag. Wide-range of cultures, regions, and temporal periods represented.
Calisphere, University of California's digital primary sources
The University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 200,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history.
Europeana
Includes images from Europe's museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections.
Google Art Project
Google's "collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail."
Harvard's Visual Information Access
"VIA includes catalog records for objects or images owned, held or licensed by Harvard. Access to the catalog is open to the general public: all catalog records and thumbnail images are available to everyone. Access to higher resolution images is usually available to the Harvard community, is always determined by an individual repository, and is often dependent on copyright."
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
Contains catalog records and digital images representing a rich cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and, in some cases, other units of the Library of Congress.
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Includes 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.
Life Photo Archive hosted by Google
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive (1750s to today).
National Gallery of Art | NGA Images
This repository of digital images documenting the National Gallery of Art collections allows users to search, browse, share, and download images believed to be in the public domain. More than 20,000 open access digital images up to 3000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
Provides free and open access to over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
Online museum of its works. These high-resolution images can be freely used and remixed.
Réunion des musées nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées
Over 470 000 photographs of works of art collected in the national and regional museums of France--museums such as the Louvre, Orsay, the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Picasso Museum.
Smithsonian Institution Collections Search
Search archival, print and digital content.
VADS - online resource for visual arts
Contains over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK.
Victoria & Albert Museum
Provides online access to over 265,000 images of objects in their collection.
Yale University Images
Yale University Library Digital Images Database