Free Image Collections on the Web: Bringing a Lecture or Paper to Life

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NYPL Digital Gallery
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm
“NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 415,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.” The diversity of images to be found is enormous and the entire resource works with incomparable smoothness.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html
“The Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) provides access through group or item records to about 65% of the Division's holdings, as well as to some images found in other units of the Library of Congress. Many of the catalog records are accompanied by digital images--about one million digital images in all.” Not all are in the public domain.

Smithsonian Images
http://smithsonianimages.si.edu/
“Browse or search through selected images from the Collections of the Office of Imaging and Photographic Services. Included are images from current exhibits, Smithsonian events and historic collections. Select and download screen resolution images for personal and educational use.”

The Photography Collection of Western History (the American West)
http://photoswest.org/
“Our on-line database contains a selection of historic photographs from the collections of the Denver Public Library Western History/Genealogy Department and the Colorado Historical Society. These collections, which contain more than one million items, document the history of Colorado and the American West. Our on-line database contains some 100,000 images and catalog records of North American Indians, pioneers, railroads, mining, Denver and Colorado towns, city, farm, and ranch life, recreation, scenery, news events, and numerous other subjects and states.“

The Gallery of Albumen Prints
http://albumen.stanford.edu/gallery/
”Presenting the art and science of albumen printing, this site brings together 19th Century technical instruction, contemporary research, an online forum for conservation treatment and a wealth of images. This unique resource is dedicated to those who value the application of technology to the creative process of image making.” This was the dominant form of photography from 1855 to the turn of the century.

North Carolina Civil War Image Portfolio
http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/pcoll/civilwar/
“Images in the North Carolina Collection depicting the war are from woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, and photographs. The overwhelming majority of these were made by persons accompanying Union forces or were made from sketches and other information they provided. Numerous woodcuts appeared in publications based in the north such as Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Lithographers, including Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives in New York City, produced hand-colored prints depicting Civil War events including some in North Carolina. The North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives has twenty-seven carte-de-visite prints attributed to Union photographer O. J. Smith made in New Bern about 1863, following the town's occupation. Most of the images owned by the Collection, regardless of format, are from a northern perspective and provide limited insight into life within the Confederacy.”

American Museum of Photography
http://www.photography-museum.com/
There’s a great variety here ordered in small exhibits on such topics as spirit photography, African Americans, photographic fakes, Japan, and masterworks.

Sites included were taken from the annotated list in Irene E. McDermott, “Digital Gallery: Image Collections on the Web,” Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals 13, no. 5 (May 2005): 8-12.