Research Guides: Art Research Guide: Finding Images

Tips for Finding Illustrations in Books

When searching in OneSearch includes the phrase "pictorial works" in the subject headings for books that consist mostly of illustrations. Use this phrase as part of a keyword search for books with illustrations of a particular subject, for example:

flowers "pictorial works"

You might also use the abbreviations "illus" OR "ill" along with your subject in a keyword search. Both are used to stand for "illustrations" in library catalogs. For example:

(illus OR ill) AND flowers

Online Image Databases

Note: Register for ARTstor to create Power Point presentations and image groups.

ARTstor
Comprehensive database of more than one million licensed and copyright-compliant digital images across several disciplines including, art, music, anthropology, literature, science, history, Asian studies, Latin American studies, and more.

Google Art Project
"The Art Project is a collaboration between Google and 151 acclaimed art partners from across 40 countries." "...over 30 000 works of art from sculpture to architecture and drawings..."

New York Times - Historical File
[ProQuest] Provides access to historical New York Times articles with index (1851-2018). Search using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images.
Oxford Art Online
[Oxford] Provides access to scholarly and authoritative information online about art, artists, styles, art history, and provides access to a large collection of images online.

Scholars Resource
A digitial images database including "Ancient Art, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Non-Western, Early Christian, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Nineteenth Century, Impressionism, American Art, Art of the Americas and Contemporary Art and Architecture."

Video Encyclopedia of the 20th Century
The Video Encyclopedia of the 20th Century contains 2338 digitized film and video clips covering the social, cultural, and political history of the 20th Century from 1893 to 1989. The index and clips are available to Cal Poly Humboldt students, staff and faculty only. The original video material is located on 42 laser discs available on permanent reserve at the Library Circulation Desk. Reference Guide and Index in 5 volumes (second floor: D 419 V5 1986).

Getty Open Content Images
Getty Open Content Images contains images from the Research Institute's Foto Arte Minore archive, which features photographs of Italian art and architecture, as well as images of paintings, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, antiquities, sculpture, decorative arts, artists' sketchbooks, watercolors, rare prints from the 16th through the 18th century, and 19th-century architectural drawings of cultural landmarks.
Metropolitan Museum Initiative Broadens Access to 400,000 Digital Images
The Metropolitan Museum’s initiative—called Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC)—provides access to images of art in its collection that the Museum believes to be in the public domain and free of other known restrictions; these images are now available for scholarly use in any media.
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Works that are covered by the new policy are identified on the Museum’s website (http://www.metmuseum.org/collections) with the acronym OASC. From http://metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press-room/news/2014/oasc-updated-june-5

Google Images

On the Google Images search page, select "Search tools" for the color limiter and other search options, or go to the Google Advanced Image Search.