Ask a Librarian (Chat)
Films in IUCAT
Film Databases
- Internet Movie Database
This link opens in a new window
Provides images and information on movies, television and celebrities as well as general entertainment news.
- Film Scripts Online
This link opens in a new window
Contains 135 film texts from 1903 to 2002. Includes biographical information on writers. - Ethnographic Video Online
- This link opens in a new window
Contains classic and contemporary documentaries, previously unpublished footage from anthropologists and ethnographers working in the field, and some feature films. Includes searchable transcripts. - Film Index International
- This link opens in a new window
Contains data from the British Film Institute covering world cinema from 1930 to the present. - New World Cinema: Independent Features and Shorts, 1990-Present
- This link opens in a new window
Streaming full-length feature films from leading independent distributors such as Kino Lorber, First Run Features, Film Movement, MK2, and Global Lens.
Image Databases
- AFI Catalog
- This link opens in a new window
The AFI Catalog is a national filmography documenting the history of American cinema. Cataloging currently covers the years 1893-1974 comprehensively, with additional records covering selected major films from 1975 onwards. - Archive of Americana
- This link opens in a new window
Historic American publications, books, broadsides, emphemera, newspapers, dating from as early as 1758 through the 20th Century. - ARTstor
- This link opens in a new window
Over 1,000,000 images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences. - AP Newsroom
- This link opens in a new window
Collection of images, graphics, and audio provided by The Associated Press. International in scope with images dating back as early as 1826. Please note: to access, select the “AP Newsroom” link on the EBSCO page. - Current Biography Illustrated (H.W. Wilson)
- This link opens in a new window
Biographies, images, and obituaries from the entire run of Current Biography. - Image Collection
- This link opens in a new window
A searchable collection of images ranging from photographs and maps to illustrations and etchings.
Visual and Stock Photo Resources
Introductory Resources & Guides
- Image Resources Guide Comprehensive guide to databases that are useful for finding advertisements, illustrations, photographs, and artworks.
- Visual Literacy Guide Helpful introductory guide to understanding visual literacy, with suggestions for further reading resources
- Image Citation: Formats and Best Practices This guide covers image citation formats for APA, MLA, and Chicago style. It also contains citation examples and resources that you may find useful.
- Finding Images (NYU Libraries) This guide is designed to assist with locating images of artworks in various formats.
- Finding Images (Duke Libraries) Quality, Scholarly Images for Research, Publication; Scanning Recommendations and Copyright
When looking for images, always pay attention to copyright notes and image attribution/citation guidelines. Below are some commonly used stock photo websites including Unsplash and Adobe Stock.
- Adobe Stock
- This link opens in a new window
At Indiana University, users with access to Adobe Creative Cloud (including students) have access to Adobe Stock. Users have unlimited access to Adobe's standard stock assets, including nearly 200 million photos, vector graphics, and illustrations, which can be used in presentations, reports, videos, websites, and other creative work. - Creative Commons
- This link opens in a new window
Database of open access content, including images, that can be shared, used, and remixed as needed for a variety of projects. - New York Public Library (NYPL) Digital Collections
- This link opens in a new window
The New York Public Library (NYPL) Digital Collections platform is the primary portal for engaging with our digitized collections and their descriptions, over 922,495 items and counting. While that is a small fraction of the Library's overall holdings, it is representative of the diversity of our vast collections—from books to videos, maps to manuscripts, illustrations to photos, and more. To date, there are 293,499 public domain items in Digital Collection. - Openverse
- This link opens in a new window
Openverse searches across more than 300 million images from open APIs and the Common Crawl dataset. It goes beyond simple search to aggregate results across multiple public repositories into a single catalog, and facilitates reuse through features like machine-generated tags and one-click attribution. - Pexels
- This link opens in a new window
Free stock photos, royalty free images & videos shared by creators. - ShotStash
- This link opens in a new window
ShotStash is a resource for free stock photographs for creative professionals. - Smithsonian Open Access
- This link opens in a new window
Open access repository of image resources from the Smithsonian. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo. - Unsplash
- This link opens in a new window
Over 3 million free high-resolution images brought to you by the world’s most generous community of photographers. - Wikimedia Commons
- This link opens in a new window
Directory of open access images, videos, and sounds that can be freely shared, from the Wikimedia Foundation.
The following websites offer stock photos with a greater diversity of people (in terms of gender, race, ability, etc.) than many of the larger stock photo website. The list below was partially adapted from:
- Stock Photos and Illustration (Better Allies)
- Inclusive Research Guides Guidelines (Hunter Library Research Guides)
- Black.illustrations
- This link opens in a new window
Illustrations of Black people for your next digital project. Many packs are free, some packs come with a small fee. - Centre for Aging Better ResourceSpace
- This link opens in a new window
Positive and realistic images of older people in a bid to challenge negative and stereotypical views of later life. - Disabled And Here Collection
- This link opens in a new window
This is a disability-led effort to provide free & inclusive stock images from our own perspective, with photos and illustrations celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC). - The Gender Spectrum Collection: Stock Photos Beyond the Binary
- This link opens in a new window
The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the clichés. This collection aims to help media better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities—people with careers, relationships, talents, passions, and home lives. - Illustrate Change
- This link opens in a new window
A library of medical illustrations showing dark skin tones, designed to improve patient care. Freely available to use for educational and training purposes. - Jopwell Collection
- This link opens in a new window
Free stock photos featuring Black, Latinx, and Native American students and professionals. - Nappy
- This link opens in a new window
Provides beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people to startups, brands, agencies, and everyone else. Nappy makes it easy for companies to be purposeful about representation in their designs, presentations, and advertisements. - Plus-Size Stock Photos (AllGo)
- This link opens in a new window
As a technology company focused on serving plus-size people, we created this collection to meet our own needs for our company Instagram account. We needed photos of plus-size people doing normal things and existing stock photo sites either didn’t have images we liked or the costs were prohibitively high. But before we took the first photo for this project, we knew we were going to publish the images for free. At AllGo, we’re committed to doing everything we can to increase the representation of plus-size people. - TONL
- This link opens in a new window
TONL seeks to transform the idea of stock photography by displaying images of diverse people and their stories around the world. - Transgender Media Portal
- This link opens in a new window
The Transgender Media Portal aims to make audiovisual work by trans, Two Spirit, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people more available to artists, activists, festival programmers, researchers, instructors, and the public. - UK Human Development Institute
- This link opens in a new window
UK Human Development Institute is the full participation and contribution of all people with disabilities in all aspects of society. These photos can be downloaded and used to create and enhance visual and digital products, social media posts, and project websites.