Visual Sources
Visual materials, i.e., drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, films, videos, etc. are to be found in many Harvard libraries. Records for many, but by no means all, individual Harvard University Library images are available in VIA, an online catalog of images. Records include subjects and a thumbnail image.
- Images
- Film
Images
A selection of online major institutional and subject collections is listed here. Many more can be found using the Search Engines and Link Collections (below).
Major Institutional and Subject Collections
American Memory (Library of Congress)
AP Multimedia Archive (AccuNet) is a searchable database of over 700,000 Associated Press photographs, charts and other graphics from the 1840s to the present.
Calisphere (University of California) includes 150,000 digitized primary sources.
Online Archive of California offers collections from several California museums, historical societies, and archives.
Corbis Images (commercial site)
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
National Archives and Records Administration Photos and Pictures Online
National Archives and Records Administration Photographs and Graphic Works (Research Guide) Their online catalog, ARC, can be searched by subject and format.
National Portrait Gallery's Collections Search
NYPL Digital Gallery offers over 700,000 images from the New York Public Library.
Search Engines and Link Collections
American Historical Images (Digital History).
Digital Images Collections Wiki offers links to collections of Free- and Fair-Use digital images arranged by subject.
Picturing U.S. History, Web Resources
Wikimedia Commons is a database of over 5 million freely usable media files.
Further Information
Directory to Photographs at Harvard
Photographica: Research Guide for Photography@Harvard
Motion Picture/Television/Radio
British Pathé offers numerous British newsreels and documentaries
Academic Video Online has numerous modern documentaries together with newsreels from 1929 to the present.
EUscreen offers free online access to videos, stills, texts and audio from European broadcasters and audiovisual archives.
INA (Institut national de l’audiovisuel)
Library of Congress Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division holds vast numbers of films. Most are not available online, but copies can sometimes be purchased. Many of these films are available through American Memory and the Prelinger Archives of "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films in the Internet Archive (select Search Moving Images). If the film you want is not evident on the LC website, enquire directly as the collection is not fully cataloged.
American History in Video has numerous modern documentaries together with newsreels from 1929 to the present.
Library of American Broadcasting
Further Information