Finding Images Online

Welcome back to another academic year at the University of Colorado Boulder! One of the summer projects the Visual Resources Center has been working on is reorganizing and updating our Find Images guide.

As for University of Colorado image resources, you will find information about and links to the VRC's departmental image collection (access restricted to the CU community) and the CU Digital Library. Our new Find Images Elsewhere on the Web section is where we have really focused on updating content to help you locate images. We've got a link there to our page on Image Finding Guides, which contain useful image finding aids that we have gathered from elsewhere. You'll also find links to our pages on General Digital Collections, Libraries, and Related Content (image resources representing broad content, with works from around the world and across historical periods), and Selected Online Museum Collections (museums that have been selected for the quality and scope of their online collections).

Perhaps the biggest change to our Find Images content is the collection of selected image resources organized chronologically, geographically, or by type:

• 18th and 19th Century European and Early American
• African
• Ancient Aegean, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman
• Ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian
• Architecture
• Asian
• Australian and Pacific
• Early Christian, Byzantine, and Medieval
• Early Modern European
• Indigenous North, Central, and South American
• Islamic
• Latin American
• Modern and Contemporary
• Photography

We imagine this site as a perpetual work in progress, which we will continue updating as we encounter new resources that we think will be useful to you. We hope you find this new resource helpful, and as always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions.

What Happened to Google's Advanced Image Search?

A couple of people have remarked to me lately that they can no longer find Google's Advanced Image Search feature. Google is known for its clean design, and they have also been working toward a more consistent user experience across their various services. In keeping with these principles they recently simplified their image search interface.

Take heart; you can still get there from here. Go to the Image Search page and look for the gear icon in the upper right corner. Voilà! All of the options are still there: Image size, aspect ratio, type of image, source of image, color in image, usage rights, file type, and region.

FOLLOW UP: Sigh... Not long after I posted this, Google tweaked the Image Search page once more. Now you must enter a search term first, then look for the gear icon. Clean design, yes, but not exactly intuitive.

Finding Video, Audio and Images Online: JISC Advice Document

JISC Digital Media continues providing the world with helpful information: they have recently updated their advice document, Finding Video, Audio and Images Online.  Lots of good information here about Web site databases and online collections, search tips, search engines, automatic alerts, etc. Their first piece of advice is to be clear about what you want from your search, and they've embedded this video from an adorable short film about actual requests at the Hulton Archive for images that could never exist.  I think most of us who work with image collections recognize this challenge!



JISC Digital Media is the UK service that provides advice, guidance and training to the UK's Further and Higher Education community.  Fortunately for those of us across the pond and elsewhere, they freely share their advice documents online.  They are divided into advice on still images, moving images, audio, and cross-media.  Each of these areas contains dozens of advice documents, organized into easy to navigate sections, with information about file formats, software, hardware, managing digitization (er, digitisation) projects, managing digital resources, and finding digital resources.  There is a wealth of information here.  Thank you, JISC!

Localize Your Flickr Images and Search for Others

Loc.alize.us is an easily installed, free bookmarklet "that enables mapping, geocoding and geotagging directly in your Flickr photo page." A bookmarklet is a small program you can keep in your browser's bookmarks or post in a Web page. Geocoding is providing geographic data, such as latitude and longitude or place names, to maps and other items. Geotagging is assigning these kinds of data to files like photographs and videos. Loc.a.lize.us combines these technologies with Google Maps' API (application program interface) to let you geotag your images so that others can see where the photographs were taken. The localize bookmarklet is available here. Once you have saved the bookmarklet to your browser, simply:

1) open one of your Flickr photos
2) click on the bookmarklet in your browser menu
3) click on "Search Place"
4) enter a location and voilà, your image is geotagged.

You can also search for everyone's geotagged images in a Google Maps interface at the loc.alize.us Web site.

From the developer, here are the key features of the bookmarklet:

• Place Search: Find your places all around the world.
• Address Search: Street-level accuracy for US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan.
• Fast Google Map Interface: Smooth zoom, large controls, map/satellite/hybrid mode.
• Fullscreen mode: Explore our world with maximum browser space.
• Link in Description: Let others see where your pictures were taken.
• Remember location: Your last saved view will be stored for later geotagging.
• Map everyone's photos: Run the bookmarklet on geotagged photos from your friends.
• Shortcut GeoCoder: Try searching for "nyc" or "10101".
• Longitude/Latatide input: Map values like "N 40°45', W 73°59'" or "40.75, -73.98".
• EXIF data extraction: Auto transform of GPS injected data.

and the key features of the Web site:

• Tag Cloud: Filter results by specific topics.
• Find People: See where your or your friends have been.
• Place Search: Find any place all around the world.
• Fast Map Interface: Smooth zoom, map/satellite/hybrid mode.
• Full screen Preview: See your photos in high quality.
• Shareable URLs: Copy and send dynamic anchors

New Functionality in Google Image Search

Google has been adding new functionality to its image searches. The "show options" link that appears with search results gives the user the opportunity to restrict searches on size, type, and color. Size now includes a broader range of options, from "medium" and "large," to "larger than" a range of pixel dimensions and megapixel sizes. It also allows the user to search for specific image size and proportion by entering precise pixel dimensions. Type choices comprise faces, photos, clip art, or line drawings. Color options include full color, black and white, or specific colors from a small menu of choices -- this yields image results which prominently feature shades of the selected color. This option, while a welcome development, is still primitive when compared to other online tools (see Idée's Multicolr Search Lab, for example).

The Advanced Image Search repeats most of this functionality (no color menu option), but additionally permits:

• Content types: allows the user to find images from the news, in addition to faces, photos, clip art, and line drawings.
• Aspect ratio: returns images with aspect ratios that are tall, square, wide, or panoramic.
• Filetypes: yields image files formatted as JPG, GIF, PNG, or BMP.
• Domain: lets one search a particular site or domain.
• Usage Rights: returns images that are labeled for reuse, including for commercial use with or without modification.

Finding Images on Flickr: Advice Document from JISC

JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) has just released an advice document, Finding Images on Flickr. With hints on using images you find on Flickr, sorting your search results, date searching, finding images using maps, finding photos taken by specific camera models, subscribing to photo feeds, and more, this document contains a lot of useful information. A section on further resources provides related links such as JISC's Photo Sharing Sites and Images in Blogs and Wikis, Flickr's How to get the most out of Flickr, and Creative Commons' Questions for people thinking about using a Creative Commons-licensed work.

Image: johnb/uk, old/cameras, 2009. From Flickr, some rights reserved under a Creative Commons license.

Data Visualization and Mashups: Tag Galaxy

Data visualization and mashups are both hot technology topics, and we might encounter and use them frequently without even recognizing them. Data visualization is simply the representation of data in visual form. Mashups may be defined very generally to mean the combination of elements to create new entities and services. Among other things, mashups might occur in Web applications, music, or videos. A good example of a Web application that embodies both data visualization and mashup technology is Tag Galaxy. It is one of many Web applications that take advantage of Flickr's open API (Application Program Interface), which allows third parties to access and manipulate images and data within Flickr to create new applications with novel functionality (i.e., mashups). Tag Galaxy invites you to search for a Flickr tag (a keyword that a Flickr user has assigned), and renders the search results of matching Flickr tags and related tags visually like a solar system (i.e., data visualization). This allows a user to observe the relationships among Flickr tags (and their associated images) in a novel and visually compelling way. This might prompt new image searches with previously unanticipated keyword combinations, which may in turn yield unexpected yet valuable search results.

The thumbnails shown here are from a search I conducted in Tag Galaxy with an initial tag query of ruins. The constellation of tag results include the terms temple, Rome, Italy, Mexico, castle, ancient, abandoned, and architecture (first image above). I selected temple, and in the next set of results chose angkorwat. On the following results (second image) I double clicked on the sun-like object representing the combination of tags I had followed, ruins+temple+angkorwat, and arrived at a "planet" comprised of images with these matching tags, which I can rotate with my mouse to observe in its entirety (third image). To see more search results I can scroll through more batches rendered in this "planet" form. I can click on any of the individual images to see a larger version and its title, with a link that take me to its home within Flickr.

Tag Galaxy and Cooliris (which I recently discussed here) are just two applications that use Flickr's API to search and display Flickr data in new ways. Some other useful tools are highlighted in the recent article by Ben Parr over at Mashable, titled 7 Totally Unique Flickr Search Tools.

(Visual) Information Literacy

Todd Gilman, the librarian for literature in English at Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library, recently wrote an article for the Chronicle which highlights an important misconception about students' abilities to use technology effectively in research. It is too easy to assume that students who were raised with technology are able to use these tools efficiently without training. A 2008 study on the so-called "Google Generation," commissioned by the British Library and JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), supports Gilman's position: it found that, "although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web."

Gilman notes the difference between computer-literate and research-literate, and offers tips to faculty members on helping their students enhance their research skills. These include working with librarians to devote a class period to search strategies, taking a tour of the library, and incorporating research skills into assignments.

As with text-based resources, the most effective methods for finding and using the best image resources for research and learning are not always self-evident. Google Images can be a handy tool among a range of options, but many valuable resources are invisible to standard search engines, hidden in the deep Web. Even when students are aware of resources such as ARTstor or the CU Digital Library, they often do not know about the most effective ways to use them. The VRC is happy to help CU Art and Art History students with these resources and skills. We offer on-site VRC orientations; virtual VRC orientations in the classroom; a Web page with an index of selected image resources; and one-on-one training with students and faculty members in image research, image scanning, and image presentation software. Please let us know how we can help you and your students!

Image: by l2oot, from stock.xchng

Spice Up Your Image Searches with Cooliris

If you haven't yet tried Cooliris to search for images and videos, you are in for a treat. Cooliris is a free and easy to use plug-in for Firefox (Windows XP/Vista, Mac, and Linux), Internet Explorer, and Safari (Mac), which "transforms your browser into a lightning fast, cinematic way to browse online photos and videos." The "3D Wall" interface provides a gorgeous and seamless way to scroll through thousands of search results from the Web or images stored on your own computer.

Cooliris works with hundreds of Web sites. These include image search sites like Google Images, Yahoo Images, and Ask Images; photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, and deviantART; professional stock photo sites including Getty Images and iStockphoto; video sites like YouTube; social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo; and many others.

After installing Cooliris, there are two ways main ways to launch it. You can visit a supported site directly and perform a search. Here you may mouseover images or videos in search results and click on the Cooliris icon that appears; this takes you to your search results in the Cooliris 3D Wall environment. Or you may simply click on the Cooliris icon on your browser's toolbar and perform a search within Cooliris.

Once in Cooliris, a search box allows you to repeat a search in selected sites like Google, Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube. An option to search "My Computer" is a new and much anticipated feature. A Preferences menu lets you customize Wall and Slideshow settings. While creating and logging on to a Cooliris account is not necessary, you can e-mail others about images you find and save favorite images for future reference.

There are some features that I hope Cooliris will incorporate soon. A built-in save function is not yet available. In the meantime, Cooliris provides a quick link to each image's source page, where you can easily save the image to your computer as permitted. An advanced search feature within Cooliris would also be useful. For now, you can conduct a search for large images in Google, for example, and then launch Cooliris to quickly scroll through those results.

More information about features and compatibility can be found here. The Self-Help page also provides six ways to optimize the functionality of Cooliris.