Visual Research is distinct from textual research in that the desired end result of the search is a visual or audiovisual resource instead of a textual one. As image captions and titles vary from person to person and cannot be known as intuitively as a title of a book or article, there are different tactics one must use for effective visual research. Key metadata points to consider when searching for visual items are:
*Subject (keep alternative words in mind for your chosen subject)
*Photographer/Creator
*Origin
*License
*Year or date of publication
Often, you will use these metadata points more vigorously than if you were only searching a textual source.
When you are searching for visual items, audio items will often accompany them. Around half of the repositories below have audio items as well as visual and audiovisual materials. These three types of items are often considered the major alternatives to text and are therefore often grouped together instead of being deal with in their own individual groups. The effects of this are many, but they should not be examined here.
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
This public library contains images from museums and libraries all around the world, but mostly within the United States. Most of the topics covered are related to United States history, but some of them involve world history. There are currently over 47,000,000 images, texts, videos, and sounds.
This library on Internet Archive only contains images. Most, but not all, of these images are open for free use.
This repository provides access to one of the largest collections of digital images in the world. Over one million images exist on this page.
Around five hundred thousand images exist in the holdings of the New York Public Library Digital Collections. This library collects images that have to do with many topics and regions aside from New York.
More than six hundred million images and audio files are contained in this site, with varying licenses. Subjects and origins are across the world.
There are thousands of images, along with interpretations of these images, in this digital gallery by the Smithsonian Museum. Images come form all Smithsonian and related institutions.
This site has more than ninety million images, audio files, and videos. Anyone can contribute images, but many of them are high quality. All Creative Commons licenses are on this website.