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The Library: Product Design

Image taken from page 677 of 'John Cassell's Illustrated History of England. The text, to the Reign of Edward I., by J. F. Smith; and from that period by W. Howitt'

Image taken from page 677 of 'John Cassell's Illustrated History of England'.

Find this and over one million other copyright free images on the British Library Photostream.

Copyright guidelines

Copyright aware

Copyright Aware is a BBC website explaining what copyright is and gives guidance on how you can protect your own creative work and how to use other people's work legally.

Audio visual materials in the Library

The Library has a collection of film, television and video games available to borrow.

To search the collection go to Discover and on the Advanced Search screen choose which format you would like the results to be, e.g. DVD video, sound recording, etc.

Videos

Images

Free image sources

Even if an image is "free" it should still be acknowledged if you use it. A Harvard reference for an online image would look like this:

Norfolk, S. (2016) Oscar Niemeyer staircase [Online image]. Available from: <http://www.simonnorfolk.com/meanderings/meander-01> [Accessed 24 July 2021].

You can find guidelines for referencing images and other sources on Skills for Learning.

British Council Visual Arts Collection

Artworks by British artists bought to demonstrate the very best in contemporary British practice in all medias. Over 8,500 works of British art can be found on the website.

British Library Photostream

The British Library has uploaded over one million public domain scans from 17th-19th century books to Flickr. The images are maps, geological diagrams, illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and more scanned from 65,000 volumes held by the British Library and they can be used and adapted for any purpose.

British Museum

More than 800,000 images from the British Museum’s Collections.

Courtauld Photographic Collections

A collection of over 3 million images from the Conway and Witt Libraries of the Courtauld Institute in London.

D&AD

Design and Art Direction (D&AD) has an online archive of the finest examples of design and advertising.

Design Museum Online Archive

Online examples of pioneering design with images from the museum's collections.

Europeana

Explore over 58 million digital resources, including artworks, artefacts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe’s leading galleries, libraries, archives and museums.

Getty Images Embed Tool

Getty Images is a photobank of stock images and photographs, made available for use in websites, blogs and social media platforms through their embed tool (only currently works when off-campus).

The Getty Open Content Program

The J. Paul Getty Trust makes freely available all digital images to which it holds the rights, or that are in the public domain, to be used for any purpose. Currently, there are more than 140,000 images.

Image*After

A large online photograph collection, including art, architecture, industrial design, and textures. All images can be downloaded and used freely with copyright restrictions.

Indianapolis Museum of Art

Over 27,000 high-quality images available for viewing, including thousands you can download for personal, scholarly or commercial use. The collections of this museum comprise paintings, sculpture, decorative and industrial design, prints, drawings and photographs, as well as textiles and fashion arts.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog

This collection include photographs, fine and popular prints, drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the focus is on materials produced in the US and content documenting its history. High-resolution images are available to download and the vast majority are copyright free.

OpenGlam Open Collections

A compilation of openly licensed image collections from several cultural institutions. All of those listed contain images that can be freely used without restriction.

RIBApix

The online image database of the RIBA British Architectural Library, the world's most extensive visual archive devoted to architecture. Includes photographs, drawings and engravings, covering world architecture of all periods together with related subjects such as landscape and design. You can browse the images or download them for educational purposes.

V&A Images

Over 783,000 images from the V&A collections.

V&A YouTube Channel

The V&A YouTube Channel is the V&A's online film magazine. The high quality films feature items in the V&A's collection, celebrity interviews from private views and exhibition showcases.