Site search / Reuse 2025

'P' - Picture researcher for book projects

About her work

• Freelance picture researcher and indexer - picture search and indexes for books; for illustrated publishers - fine art, social history, visual history

• Thames and Hudson - previous employer, current client; British Library, Folio Society, academics, publishers who are producing books for private clients

• Briefs range from “Here’s my book, can we have some pictures”; “I want these precise images of these precise artworks and these precise events”

About her process

• Examines a text and looks to see how you can best illustrate the text, to add some added value visually to the text

• 1000 words - image led; Jules Verne example with the Victorian illustrations; portraits and other contextual images

• Her sources - image libraries, libraries and institutions with digitised archives; copyright implications of using artworks - creative copyright; what rights there might be to the image (2D image and photo vs. 3D image which can be different - find the image, how to use it, and what the rights are

• She’s more likely to take projects on where she’s got prior knowledge; conastantly learning, constantly wanting to find new sources; sources that she worked with changed a lot in the last 5 years with digitisation and licensing changes

About the sites/sources she uses

• Europeana and Google Arts and Culture - doing cross-collection searches about a subject that she’s just learning about

• Using some of the main agencies [WHO?] - starting to get a lot of the same images everywhere, “they are gobbling each other up” so I hope people see the value of sites like europeana

• It’s nice to use ‘new images’ that have not been used a lot before. Uniqueness can be key.

• I’ll check the copyright situation first - to get out copyright requests first

• DACS - represent most major 20th and 21st century artists and designers, Picasso etc; estates have often assigned the rights to DACS (Matisse for example, though he’s coming out of copyright soon which is very exciting!)

• I use umbrella sites like Europeana to get a feel for the subject matter

• Key - how suitable the image is with the text; she asks for the actual text - buildings and sculptures, where the text mentions only a part of it that she’d zoom in on with the image

• Size and quality of the image you can get, and how that matches the output (e.g. full-page bled colour images - book is black and white with plate sections and quality paper- so they have to be super high quality and ‘ping’); sometimes printing in black and white it can ‘turn to mush’ - quality assessment and how that matches the brand guidelines of the client

• Umbrella sites are hugely useful - e.g. types in ‘Jules Verne’ and then refines using the filters, and just see what it throws up and follows the sources form there - it’s actually quite a good way of discovering new sources [HOW DOES SHE SAVE IMAGES - DOES SHE HAVE GALLERIES OR DOES SHE DOWNLOAD DIRECTLY - she takes screenshots first, and then downloads them if they’re chosen]

• ArtUK, Digital public Library of America, ‘Openverse’ and other new creative commons sites; Google arts and cultures curated stories are quite good, “I don’t know if Europeana does that” - “in my head Europeana is a database, whereas Google AC I perceive that as being more exhibition or editorial led”

About her use of Europeana

• I like the Europeana interface - it’s nice and clean, I already know what i want to search so I start with the search box; I like the serendipity as you come across things; item page and metadata is very clearly laid out and easy to use; the one-stop-shop umbrella site is so useful - GETTY and ALAMY - [I’m sure they’re just scraping websites which is really sneaky] are gobbling up a lot of stuff that they shouldn't be and monetising it - it’s useful to get back to the quality of the images and where they really are; you’re getting it from the horse’s mouth on europeana; be able to trust the information you’ve got in front of you; it’s really important to have the transparency of where it’s coming from and I trust Europeana.

• ‘You know _____ ______ ___ ___ first, and it’s a really good starting point'

• What could be improved on Europeana - I didn’t know about all the other things I’ve never used before; I’d have spent a bit more time playing around with these other features; I mainly use it as a trustworthy search engine that returns high quality results. It’s a useful gateway into other portals - I go to Europeana first and then journey into other sites (Gallica.fr - BNF website)

• Google Arts and Culture is over-designed, intended maybe for end-users who aren't researchers like me whereas Europeana is aimed at people like me

About her process and needs for images

• “I want to things as quickly as possible because they’re not paying me enough to fanny about”

• I often take screengrabs first in a proposal to show the client - I want to see the image and the accompanying info (the metadata) - the title, the library/source that it’s from, and any reference number (url), other stuff in the ‘Good to know’ tab and sometimes even the ‘all metadata’ table; also file size, cost, etc.

• I come to Europeana to start the first wishlist of items; then makes a powerpoint with the proposal of them; if they’re selected by the client I might come back and download it; “where’s the best place I can get a good quality file for as little money as possible”

• National Library of France - I know them and what their costs are

• Many of the institutions have really long turnaround times for them to send the high quality files; some of them you can get it instantly for free

• Getty is trying to tie people up with a subscription model, which my clients have to sign up for to use the images for their books; they have to pay thousands of pounds for a year-long subscription

Final thoughts

• Most researchers I know work like this, my process is probably quite standard for the types of books I work on. Some researchers who work with only one publisher might prioritise existing subscriptions the client might have to Getty etc. - it’s easy and really quick; “they’re the amazon of image licensing”; Shutterstock is mergin with Getty

• It’s nice that it’s European based, “and you don’t have to go to America for everything”