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Research and Preservation Issues in Image Archiving
A presentation at the 2002 SLA News Division conference

Part One: Online Sources for Images
(see also: Part Two: "Losing the First Draft of History" )

The American Memory website is one of several Internet sources for public domain images.

Speaker: David Cappoli

Reported by Jessica Baumgart

    Finding high-resolution, quality images on the Internet can be quite a challenge. At the 2002 Special Libraries Association annual conference, David Cappoli, Digital Resources Librarian at UCLA's Department of Information Studies, demonstrated the variety of graphic material available through the Internet.

    Speaking at the SLA News Division's "Research and Preservation Issues in Image Archiving" session, Coppoli discussed many Web sites where researchers can get images, either for free or by paying a fee.

    He began by demonstrating Google's Image Search (http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&q=). However, most images found through a Google search will be low-resolution (72 dpi) and of uncertain copyright status. Professional image researchers usually need high-resolution and copyright clearance.

Images in the public domain:

    For images of America, Cappoli recommends the Library of Congress' American Memory site (http://memory.loc.gov/). As well as textual materials on the Web site, there are many images, some of which are in the public domain. The Public Health Image Library (http://phil.cdc.gov/) and NASA's Visible Earth (http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/) are other sources of images in the public domain. If paying for an image is not a problem, the Associated Press Photo Archive (http://photoarchive.ap.org/), which charges a fee for the use of photos, could be a terrific place to find photos: The AP Archive has more than 700,000 images, including some historical photos and graphics.

    Cappoli included several sources for specific types of images, too. Howard Besser's T-Shirt Database (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/T-Shirts/) is based on a UCLA professor's T-shirt collection. The images are cataloged and have text descriptions for easier searching. Airliners.net (http://www.airliners.net/, requires registration) has a collection of photos of aircraft, as well as other materials related to aviation. Cartoon Bank (http://www.cartoonbank.com) contains covers and cartoons from New Yorker magazines. Old advertisements might be in the collection of Ad*Access (http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/), which has newspaper and magazine advertisements from 1911 to 1955 in certain subject areas.

Copyright and digital watermarks:

    In using images from websites, news researchers need to be alert to copyright status. The collections may not own the rights to all of the images they display. They may have permission to include certain images in their Web sites, but have no authority to redistribute the image or allow others to do so. He recommends carefully reading any copyright or terms of use statements before using any of the images from these Web sites, especially if the image is going to be published, broadcast, or otherwise used for commercial purposes.

    Some of these companies use watermarks to protect their images from misuse. Watermarks discourage people from simply downloading the image from a Web site without paying fees or seeking copyright permission because they often cover or distort a vital part of the image. They come in several variations. Corbis (http://www.corbis.com/), a fee-based photo archive, uses a symbol and their name across the middle of an image. Time, Incorporated's Picture Collection (http://www.thepicturecollection.com/, requires registration) uses an arch with their name in it across their pictures.

 

David Cappoli manages the electronic collections of the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. He maintains a Web site with more links to and information about image archives at http://skipper.gseis.ucla.edu/staff/dcappoli/html/image_sources.htm.

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