Reference question of the day was about finding public domain images. Everyone’s got their go-tos. If I am looking for illustrations or old photos specifically I’ll often use other people’s searches on top of the Internet Archive’s content. Here’s a little how to.
1. Check the Internet Archive Book Images feed on Flickr. What I often do is search (which finds the words that surround the images) and then click straight through to the book (which is always linked in the metadata) and then fish around. For example…
- Search for cricket
https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=126377022%40N07&view_all=1&text=cricket - “Oh this photo is interesting”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14598293148/ - “Here are all the photos from that book”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/tags/bookidwgcricketingremi00grac - Book is readable here
https://archive.org/stream/wgcricketingremi00grac/wgcricketingremi00grac#page/n253/mode/1up - Internet Archive page is here
https://archive.org/details/wgcricketingremi00grac - I’m more used to the Open Library interface which is a different front end on the same content for the most part, it’s here.
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22896607M/W.G._cricketing_reminiscences_and_personal_recollections. - More by Internet Archive on cricket or Open Library on cricket
https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Cricket%22
https://openlibrary.org/subjects/cricket
extremal-board
The trick, I’ve found, is to try to get as close to 1923 as possible because you’re likely to have the best illustrations and still be out of copyright. Older books don’t have good illustrations because the technology was not there yet. Enjoy!
Nice post! But why 1927? Do you mean 1922, perhaps? Works published in 1923 or later can be subject to copyright in the US (though many are not, having either been published without notice or expired). Unpublished works are a moving target, with the term being based on the date of death of the photographer.
Oh my gosh just a ridiculous typo. Of course I mean 1923. Thanks for the catch.
Try using this new resource: illustrationarchive.cardiff.ac.uk. There are around a million images, which are all out of copyright. It is much easier to search and find your way around than The Internet Archive because it is devoted specifically to illustrations. Users can also view the book in which the illustration appears.
Europeana allows you to choose images according to the licencing. Try http://www.europeana.eu/portal/search.html?query=cricket&rows=24&qt=false and then the facet ‘Can I use it?” on the left
I’m a big fan of Google Advanced Image Search. https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/29508?p=ws_images_usagerights&hl=en&rd=1
… or you could try paying a few $€¥ to the poor bastards who are trying to make a living out of creating useful images.
Try looking on e.g. Picfair