Sound and vision: introducing our new audiovisual resources guide


Where can I find pictures relating to transport which I can use in my project? How do I find out what was broadcast on British television and radio on a particular day in the 1970s? Where are the best places to find examples of digital art? I need audio clips of scary sounds for my presentation – where to start? Are there any interesting oral histories in my subject area? How do I reference a podcast? I’ve found an ideal picture online, but I don’t know where it’s from – what can I do? Is there an authoritative list of famous music plagiarism cases anywhere, including audio clips?

Screenshot of oral histories from the British Library
British Library oral histories selection

You can find the answers to these, and many more intriguing questions, on our brand new guide to finding and using audiovisual resources.

We’ve updated and expanded our old images guide, and included new databases and resources for finding films and television programmes, plus audio content such as radio programmes, sound clips, podcasts and oral histories.

We’ve also updated the original still images section, which helps you find images of all genres and subjects, such as anatomy, archaeology, architecture…. and all other letters of the alphabet!

Need more help?

Keyword searching isn’t always the best way to search for audiovisual content, so if you want to find an image which looks like another one, search by colour, or find exactly what you want on Box of Broadcasts, visit our guide.

Finally, if you’re unsure whether you’re permitted to use an audiovisual resource in your assignment, and/or how to cite it, we can help with that too. Our guide contains plenty of helpful advice on using and citing audiovisual materials, and we’ve tried to include links to collections and databases which are licensed for educational use where possible (but please do check the terms and conditions in each case).

3 places to look for images for Architecture, Planning & Landscape

We know students and researchers in SAPL use images for all sorts of reasons. You might know some websites which provide some good pictures or maybe you just Google to find some. But for academic work you’ll want to ensure they are good quality, you can reference them correctly and they adhere to any Copyright terms and conditions.

You can use some of the resources from the Library to look for pictures of buildings, plans, projects and architectural photographs.

This help video covers the 3 main places we’d advise you look.

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/2713acc4-e8ec-4f3c-8052-15602a5bbed

Detail Inspiration and it’s 3000 projects spanning over 30 years.

Architects Journal Buildings Library and its 1900 projects spanning the last 20 years.

Art and Architecture Archive; a full text archive of magazines including Architects Journal and Architectural Review.

These articles have been indexed so that you can specifically search for images and photographs.

Finding and using images

New from the humanities library liaison team!

Every week, we’re giving you quick Twitter tips and tricks to help you get the best out of our resources. We’ve got so many great collections, it can be hard to keep up with what’s on offer. So sit back and let us tweet you to search success!

Earlier this week, we focused on finding and using images. Missed our tweets? Don’t worry, we’ve compiled them all together into a Twitter moment below!