Research and Course Guides: Planning, Design & the Built Environment: Need Images?

Visual Resource Blogs

Arch Daily | Broadcasting Architecture Worldwide
Architectural Videos
Compiled from many sites. Great links.
ArchNet: Islamic Architecture Community

SAHARA - Society of Architectural Historians

**Subscribe to SAHARA's YouTube Channel!**

SAHARA is a community-built digital image archive of buildings and landscapes, developed as a collaboration between the Society of Architectural Historians and ARTstor and funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

ARTstor subscribers have access to a peer-reviewed core collection of images and QTVR panoramas contributed by scholars and independent photographers and historians.
Individual SAH members may contribute their personal digital photographs and panoramas, view the contributions of other members, or download images from the core teaching and research archive.

More information...

Information for SAH members

Map Collections

Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970 - South Carolina
Includes most of the fire insurance maps of South Carolina produced by the Sanborn Map Company from the mid-1880s to around 1950. Black and white digital images produced from microform of the Sanborn maps in the Library of Congress collection. Searchable by city and date. CU users only.
Clemson Libraries Geological Survey Maps
USGS Map Locator

Key Image Resources at Clemson

Artstor Digital Library (Artstor is part of JSTOR; current platform will sunset on 8/1/24) This link opens in a new window
Our premier image resource - contains over 1,000,000 digital images of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, design, and visual culture spanning many time periods and cultures. Select, view, present, download, and manage images for research and teaching purposes. CU Libraries subscription. See links at right for help using ARTstor. Uses cookies and pop-ups. For help with ARTstor or to request instructor-level access, contact Kathy Edwards, kathye@clemson.edu

Digital Sanborn Maps 1867-1970: South Carolina
City and town maps with building footprints and a wealth of additional information, including construction materials, urban infrastructure, street names, property boundaries, etc. Several editions (over time) for some municipalities. Created by Sanborn Map Company for fire insurance purposes. You'll need the key to decipher symbols used.

Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new window
Includes Grove Art Online, with over 5,000 searchable and embedded art images, maps, and line drawings. Also provides over 40,000 editorially selected image links to museums and galleries around the world. Follow image links in articles, or use the Image Search option in Advanced Search mode.

Open-Access Image Collections

"Open access" availability does not mean that the images in these collections are in the public domain - rather, it refers to their accessibility for research and educational purposes. For copyright and use restrictions, locate and read the image use policy for each collection.

Art Images for College Teaching (AICT) This link opens in a new window
Free access (for educational purposes) to the study collection of art historian Allen T. Kohl. Emphasis on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture.
Archnet This link opens in a new window
Focused on Muslim cultures and civilizations, with images of historical monuments, contemporary architecture, and general views. Search, or browse by country, building type, style, usage, decade of construction, or site name.
Art & Archaeology Artifact Browser This link opens in a new window
Part of the Perseus Digital Library of materials on the Greco-Roman world, the Browser documents 424 ancient buildings and 179 sites, in addition to objects.

Built in America (Library of Congress)
Measured drawings and photographs from the Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Record, and Historic American Landscapes Survey. Search, or browse by subject or place name.
Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South
Over 7,100 images of some 1,700 buildings and gardens in rural and urban areas of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, and to a lesser extent Florida, Mississippi, and West Virginia. Photographed primarily in the 1930s by Frances Benjamin Johnson (1864-1952). Digitized by the Library of Congress.
CATENA - Digital Archive of Historic Gardens + Landscape
Landscape history resource, with a focus on the villa. Sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center, NYC.
Cities and Buildings Database (University of Washington)
Multi-disciplinary collection of over 10,000 digitized images of buildings and cities drawn from across time and throughout the world, freely available to anyone with access to the Web for use in the classroom, student study, or for individual research purposes.Search for buildings by country, city, style, title, architect, date of construction, and other fields.
Cities Around the World (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries)
Over 6,100 photographic images of more than 450 ancient and modern cities worldwide, taken between 1942 and 1994. From the slide collections of the American Geographical Society Library.
Emporis Images - Emporis.com
A commercial photo archive, especially useful for searching for building type examples. Other parameters include location, building name, style, facade material, and colors. ALL IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHTED. Use strictly for reference.
Kidder Smith Slide Archive on American Architecture (MIT Rotch Library)
Strictly New England. Strong on early vernacular examples, with some modern buildings. Only a portion of the archive has been digitized.
RIBApix - British Architectural Library (Royal Institute of British Architects)
Public access image database featuring world architecture of all periods, interior design, landscape, topography, planning, construction and the decorative arts. Browse, simple or advanced search (architect or building), and subject search. Download low-resolution images for personal use or teaching purposes Images are copyrighted by the BAL/RIBA - "the world's most extensive visual archive devoted to architecture" (see their Terms and Conditions).

ARTstor Help

How to use the Artstor Digital Library
28 short videos cover 'Getting Started' to 'Troubleshooting' - Choose what you need!
Register for an ARTstor Account
An "ARTstor in 3 Minutes" YouTube video (2:52)
Export to PowerPoint
Walkthrough of exporting images to PowerPoint (4:45)
Making an Image Group
Explores user options for organizing images within the ARTstor Digital Library (7:26)
System Requirements
Support

Planning, Design & the Built Environment: Need Images?