Note: The image sources in this list cover either all time periods or time periods 20th century-present. See image sources from the other English & American Literature subject guides: Medieval to 18th Century-Images ;19th Century-Images.
This resource provides images of artworks and cultural artifacts of a wide variety of types, including paintings, sculpture, photographs, prints, furniture, textiles, ceramics, and more from around the world. The collection can be searched by creator, time period, type of work or by region of origin. Note:The ARTstor site will be retired as of August 1, 2024. Access to ARTstor materials will be through JSTOR.
This resource provides access to the complete Encyclopædia Britannica. After entering the database, click "Media Browse" to search across millions of images and videos from the encyclopedia, including the "Arts and Literature -> Literature" collection.
Image Search Engines - Freely Available on the Internet
This internationally recognized image database provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains @100,000 images, is global in coverage, and includes all areas of visual imagery.
An all-digital library that aggregates information and thumbnails for millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums in the United States.
Created by UNESCO and the Library of Congress, provides free online access to world cultural treasures. Includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings from a variety of countries, covering the time period 8000 BCE-2000 CE.
Explore the digital resources of Europe's museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. Holdings date back to @the 12th century. Co-funded by the European Union.
Search for images and other Internet content from other established web sites (such as Google Images or YouTube) that the content producers stated could be used commercially and/or with modification. For example, when you use Creative Commons to search Google Images, it will return only those images that are labeled for commercial reuse with modification. (read more about Creative Commons).
Digital Image Collections - Freely Available on the Internet
The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History pairs essays and works of art with chronologies, telling the story of art and global culture through the Museum’s collection.
Brings together the Bodleian Libraries' (Oxford University) discrete digital collections under a single user interface. Includes, but is not restricted to: manuscripts, incunabula, maps, periodicals, printed and manuscript music collections.
Provides free access to 900,000+ images (some in public domain) digitized from the The NYPL's collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs, streaming video, and more. Search by keyword or Browse Collections. Encompasses the Berg Collection of English and American Literature, including: printed volumes; pamphlets; broadsides; literary archives and manuscripts, representing the work of 400+ authors. Printed books in English date from William Caxton to the present day.
Cartoon archive for Punch, a magazine of humour and satire, which ran from 1841-2002. Its influential political and social cartoons captured life in detail from the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Harvard Library's dedicated image catalog. It includes content from archives, museums, libraries, and other collections throughout Harvard University.
An educational resource designed for teachers and students featuring primary sources from the Newberry Library's (Chicago) holdings, contextual essays, and discussion questions. See also Digital Newberry.
This is a web-based platform for organizing, searching, and visualizing the 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA-OWI).
