Image repositories for e-Learning

A small repository of good-quality, variable-resolution photos sorted by broad-brush categories. Searchable.

A large repository of high-quality photos of plants, animals, fossils, people, and landscapes. Thumbnail indices, medium-res images online, high-res images on request from author. Usage restrictions detailed in each record. Searchable and browsable.

A meta-search engine for free stock photography, indexing sources such as stock.xchng and Flickr. Over 3 million images are indexed.

An enormous photo-sharing community, many of the images in which are licenced under Creative Commons - check image record for licencing info.Thumbnail indices. Available resolutions determined by contributor. By joining Flickr you can build up collections from images in the repository and add your own metadata tags.

A large library of high-quality photos and textures, produced by multimedia designers. The concentration is on nature, objects, architecture, and vehicles - there are no people photos at all.

A unique feature is the abstract search, where you can look for a type of image (bright, soft, glossy, etc) rather than an image of something. You can also create your own downloadable clippings library (similar to sets in Flickr).

A bank of "free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use". Thumbnail and low-res views online, high-res images downloadable as .zip files.Sorted by broad-brush categories, browsable and searchable.

A growing library of high-quality stock photography, sorted by category, contributed under Creative Commons licences. A nice touch is that when you select a photo, thumbnails of similar photos are displayed.

A small public domain repository, browsable and searchable. Only a few top-level categories, and no "people" category.

The author's personal repository of images taken by himself. Browsable only by CD number, but searchable. They mostly seem to be landscapes, places and animals.

Hiqh-quality stock photography and some 3-D drawings, categorised by topic with a search engine.

A very large repository of high-quality photography, categorised and searchable. Thumbnail views, photos available in medium- and high-res. Each image record lists the restrictions, if any, placed on usage by the contributor.

This is a search engine, rather than a repository. Yotophoto indexes "images that are either in the Public Domain or released under generous Creative Commons, GNU FDL or other similar licenses"

A growing database of teaching resources for UKHE, primarily images and animations but including some tutorials and case studies, sorted by subject. Browsable and searchable.

A very large archive of photos (.jpg), clip art (.wmf), animations (gif), and audio (.wav). Browsable and searchable by topic. View as thumbnail, then collect required resources into a "selection basket" and download as a MS Clip Organizer (.mpf) file. Downloaded files can be viewed in the Clip Organizer, or by navigating to the default location (C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Pictures\Microsoft Clip Organizer) where the raw files are stored in their original graphics formats. The MS copyright statement, in the section on "documents" which mentions "graphics", permits non-commercial and educational use, but forbids any networked distribution.

Usage of MS clipart may well be covered under institutional licence agreements with MS - check with your institution.

A large resource repository aimed at the UK education sector, from early school up to HE/FE, comprising images, audio, video, websites and more. Browsable, with a detailed search facilityFor full access to SCRAN, you need to register as a user and/or have an Athens login. The copyright statement explicitly forbids making the resources available to unlicenced users, which rules out using images on public websites where end-users can download the image, although usage in a compiled file (eg Shockwave, Flash, Java applet) should be ok.

A large, categorised archive of public domain vector images, including a good medical images section with a handful of high-quality anatomical diagrams.

Searchable but uncategorised vector image archive.

A large and growing collection of vector (SVG) clipart made available under the CC licence. You can browse a subject hierarchy, but the search is very poor. Stacks of signs and symbols.

Large, searchable archive of stock vector imagery in a wide range of categories.

Images available in thumbnail, medium- and high-res. Requires an Athens login.The images may be used for teaching purposes, but not for public use where the end-user can download the image. Use for CAL is explicitly permitted. Browsable and searchable, MeSH-indexed.

A medium-sized image repository, comprising mainly photos of plants, animals, bacteria and viruses, maintained by the HEA Subject Centre for Bioscience. Browsable and searchable. The terms & conditions of use explicitly allow image use in public materials, including websites and CAL, in non-profit educational contexts only.

A large resource collection aimed at those involved in health sciences, comprising images, presentations, websites, etc. Indexed, searchable, and browsable, by MeSH. Some resources are available under CC licences. Usage and rights details in resource records.

A library of images and presentation material illuminating the study of visual perception, sorted by topic, eg Anatomy & Physiology, Colour (including colour deficiency) , Development, etc. Searchable and browsable. Any educational use is permitted, including usage on public websites.

A searchable collection of high-quality, copyright-cleared video and animation clips in a range of Life Science categories, including Biochemistry and Medicine. Rather than being downloadable, the clips are made available as streaming video for incorporation in websites, VLEs, presentations, and so on. You choose a video to use, and bandwidth required, then you receive a URL to link to. Browsable and searchable by category.

Pronounced "oyster", this meta search engine 'harvests' resource records exposed by academic institutions in order to "create a collection of freely available, previously difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources that are easily searchable by anyone". The records are exposed in a particular XML schema (OAI-PMH), allowing their 'harvesting' by OAI engines.

OAIster currently harvests records from over 500 academic institutions, mostly in the USA, effectively creating a very large distributed database of resources, including images, although most resources are non-image - scholarly papers, datasets, etc. Searches are rather slow.