ENGL 161 Cultures of Desire

Giving credit

Thanks to Sarah Christensen, Visual Resources Curator at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and Jesse Hendersen, Visual Resources Curator at Colgate University, for graciously allowing me to copy text and other information from their library web pages.

Learn more from their sites at https://sites.google.com/a/colgate.edu/colgatevr/digital-images-and-copyright and http://uiuc.libguides.com/images.

Museums, Archives & Collections

Tip: To find images in museums online, type in the domain site:.museum. Select images. Then type in your keyword, for example Courtly Love,

That tells the search engine to look for images of Courtly Love in a museum web site.

Here is one example:

I love how it looks like St. George has climbed down off his horse to woo the maiden.

Link to Art Images

For many more resources on Art Images, check out the Tab Finding Art Images in the Fine Arts Subject Guide.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons Images

wikimedia logo

Wikimedia Commons contains, according to the site, a collection of over 58 million freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute."Files include images, audio, video, animations, maps, and other multimedia. Users can choose from multiple images sizes when downloading, and each image is often accompanied by information about the work depicted as well as copyright information.

Image Source: "PNG logo with text" by Wikimedia Foundation is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Flicker Commons

Using Flickr Commons

image from the Flickr Commons website

"The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer."

Images and copyright

Images and Fair Use

Images are intellectual property, too, and you need to give credit for them as you would textual information. Here are things to keep in mind when using images downloaded from the internet:
  • Always credit the source of your images.
  • Find out if the owner/creator of an image states how their image can be used, if possible.
  • Whenever possible, ask the copyright holder for permission and keep a record of this correspondence.
Under fair use guidelines, you may... 
  • Use images in course assignments such as a term paper, thesis or poster as per their degree fulfillment requirements.
  • Publicly display images incorporated in academic work when association with courses in which they are enrolled.
  • Retain work in personal portfolios for use in graduate school or employment applications, for example.
And you may not...
  • Publish images in any work in analog or digital form that do not have proper copyright clearance. When in doubt, consult the Four Factors of Fair Use.

Information above used with permission from the Colgate Visual Resources Library