Image, film and sound

Here you will find a selection of databases and web sites offering access to images, film and sound recordings.

  • Artstor
    Millions of high-quality images and media from some of the world’s top photo archives, museums, libraries, scholars, and artists, including rare materials not available anywhere else, which you can use in your work.

  • BoB National (Film and Sound)
    BoB National is a shared online off-air TV and radio recording service for UK higher and further education institutions. BoB enables staff and students to choose and record any broadcast programme from 60+ TV and radio channels.

  • BFI player (Film)  Explore archival content on BFI player as it has access to non-fiction film and television titles from the 20th century to the early 21st. Organised under six main themes, each with an introductory essay by an academic historian. Content includes rarely seen government films, written documents, newsreels, TV documentaries, discussion programmes, parliamentary recordings and much more. 

  • BFI Screenonline (Film & Image)
    This is the single most extensive publicly available resource devoted to British film and television. Rich and authoritative contextual material is provided by expert writers, specially commissioned by BFI and also includes thousands of stills, posters and press books. **Video and audio material can only be viewed in the University.

  • Bridgeman Education (Image)
    Access to large number of images, all copyright cleared, including images from museums, galleries and private collections. The comprehensive range of images spans the curriculum, providing invaluable visual teaching and learning material on a variety of subjects, including:  fine art, history, geography, politics, sociology, antiquity, literature and theatre, science and medicine, religion and philosophy.

  • Credo Reference (Image)
    CREDO is an online resource that brings together materials from a large range of reference sources. Search and explore over 200,000 images from your reference title list — all with full citations. Images are licensed for private study and research. Use the ‘Image Search’, from the drop-down menu on the search box or via the Tools tab.  

  • John Johnson Collection: An Archive of Printed Ephemera (Images)
    An Archive of Printed Ephemera. The facsimiles of printed material cover the period from 18th to the early 20th century.  The archive includes advertising and topographical images, early photographic portraits, material related to the book trade, crime and entertainment.

  • Chronicle: BBC Northern Ireland’s Television News From The 60s And 70s
    ‘Chronicle’ has made part of the BBC audio-visual archive available to UK higher and further education by digitising hours of content from the BBC Northern Ireland’s vaults. The digitised material will allow users to explore events over a 7 year time period (1969-1976) of Northern Ireland’s history, delivering a contextual experience from a political, historical and cultural perspective.

  • TRILT (Index of TV and Radio broadcasting information)
    Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching (TRILT) is a comprehensive online listings and archive of broadcast programme information.  It includes UK television and radio, terrestrial, cable and satellite television (with regional variations), all national and many local radio stations. Data is available at least ten days before transmission and builds up as an archive of programme information and schedules.
  • British Library Sounds (Sound)
    British Library Sounds holds a vast amount of sound and video recordings. The collections come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound from music, drama and literature, to oral history and wildlife sounds. Updated daily.

  • Europeana Collections (Image, Film, Sound)
    Multi-lingual online collection of millions of digitized items from European museums, libraries, archives and multi-media collections, including images, texts, audio and video.

  • American Radio History (Image)
    Documents the history of American broadcasting, including AM, FM and television. Has three million pages, including the full text of trade magazines and directories, with images.

  • US Library of Congress Digital Collections (Image, Film, Sound)

  • Google Images, Advanced Search (Image)
    The Google Advanced Image Search allows you to limit your search according to size, image type or colour, and to exclude certain keywords from your search. It also has an option to restrict your search to only those items which may be freely reproduced.

  • VADS (Visual Arts Data Service) (Image)
    A collection of over 100,000 images covering advertising, architecture, art history, crafts, design, dress, fashion, fine art, graphic design, industrial design, jewellery, painting, photography, posters, public monuments, textiles, sculpture, shoes, stained glass.. The image resources are free and copyright cleared for use in UK Higher Education. VADS.

  • Winning Equal Pay: The Value of Women’s Work (Image, Film, Sound)
    Filmed interviews with women who fought for and won equal pay, hundreds of digitised images and documents from the TUC Library Collections, plus contributions from historians and other experts.

  • Workers’ War: Home Front Recalled (Image, Film, Sound)
    This resource records and commemorates the role played by trade unions and workers on the Home Front during the Second World War.  It holds an exhibition of hundreds of digitised images and documents, oral testimony from those who worked on the Home Front during the war and contributions from historians.

  • World Digital Library (Image, Film, Sound)
    The World Digital Library (WDL) makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures and significant historical documents on one site, in a variety of ways. Content on the WDL includes books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, journals, prints and photographs, sound recordings and films.
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