Images Collections at Duke 

GIS is easy but has problems.  Because it uses a combination of image-name and words-in-context to find images, results are uneven.  Images from websites frequently are too small or too poorly scanned to be useful.  Worse yet, many web images are in volation of copyright or have been altered (proportions, color, content). Advanced Image Search is preferable.

TIPS
- images are ranked by size.  Biggest images appear first
- use a combination of quotes (phrase searching) and key word, example: "glass blowing" and India 

BEST FOR
- initial research "see what's out there"

Yahoo's "photo-sharing site" has become the number 1 tool of scholars and students.  It's easy and free (you don't have to join to use).  Most images found are: 
- Creative Commons framework for many images
-  large-format
- world-wide in scope
- unmodified (or pretty clearly marked when they are)
- easy to download

Many scholarly and professional institutions (including Duke, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Science Foundation) maintain accounts.

TIPS
- Use simple language in searching flickr.  "Cathdral Siena" will pull up more hits than "Duomo Santa Maria dell'Assunta".
- Use "tags" for more specific searches
- When one image is found, browse within that photographer's site, there may be more images not using the words you searched under
- Feel free to email the photographer.  

BEST FOR
- architecture
- popular culture
- recent events
- people in context (social anthropology) 

Wikimedia Commons attempts to collect what they consider copyright-free images found by their members on the web for inclusion in their articles and for separate searching.  Remember that most Wikimedia images are, like Google Image Search, pulled from other websources.

TIPS
- use multiple terms when searching; images frequently have many names

BEST FOR
- initial research "see what's out there"

Museums post the best pictures of their collections because they want good images of their collection out there for people to use.  Remember that just because a museum posts an image doesn't mean its copyright-free.  Images from U.S. federal museums are the exception (National Gallery of Art, National Air and Space Museum).

Smithsonian Institution Research Images - The Smithsonian's image and research catalog.

See Museums page under "Image Sites" tab

Most government (state, international governments) intend for their images to be used.  Generally, they are accurate though not always of high quality.

Google - use Google Advance Image Search and limit to domain to ".gov"

Foreign countries may support official images through their ministries of culture.  Usually searching in the language of the country [images] and [collections] brings results. Example "Bild" and "Sammlungen" (German).

Joconde - French national ministry of Culture's centralize database of art museum images